Cultural Realities Of Being

Cultural Realities of Being offers a dialogue between academic activity and everyday lives by providing an interface between several perspectives on human conduct. Very often, academic pursuits are arcane and obscure for ordinary people, this book will attempt to disentangle these dialogues, lifting everyday discourse and providing a forum for advancing discussion and dialogue. Nandita Chaudhary, S. Anandalakshmy and Jaan Valsiner bring together contributors from the field of cultural psychology to consider how people living within social groups, regardless of how liberal, are guided by collective reality and interconnected with life circumstances. The book discusses experiences and events in the lives of people of Indian cultures covering topics including family, food, pilgrimages, social dynamics and truth, in order to expand the material on human phenomena under the broad frame of cultural psychology. The book builds upon rich cultural traditions present in India, and precisely because of this focus, the book has much larger implications and relevance to the field and aims to orient the academic reader from around the world to viewing India and Indian society as a valuable area for research. Divided into three sections, the book covers: • Social presentation in culture • Representing relations • Children and youth in culture This book includes commentaries from expert academics from outside of India, providing a bridge between academic reality and cultural discourse and throwing fresh light on the everyday events presented in the text. Cultural Realities of Being will be essential reading for those studying Cross Cultural Psychology as well as those interested in social representation and identity.

Cultural Realities of Being offers a dialogue between academic activity and everyday lives by providing an interface between several perspectives on human conduct. Very often, academic pursuits are arcane and obscure for ordinary people, this book will attempt to disentangle these dialogues, lifting everyday discourse and providing a forum for advancing discussion and dialogue. Nandita Chaudhary, S. Anandalakshmy and Jaan Valsiner bring together contributors from the field of cultural psychology to consider how people living within social groups, regardless of how liberal, are guided by collective reality and interconnected with life circumstances. The book discusses experiences and events in the lives of people of Indian cultures covering topics including family, food, pilgrimages, social dynamics and truth, in order to expand the material on human phenomena under the broad frame of cultural psychology. The book builds upon rich cultural traditions present in India, and precisely because of this focus, the book has much larger implications and relevance to the field and aims to orient the academic reader from around the world to viewing India and Indian society as a valuable area for research. Divided into three sections, the book covers: • Social presentation in culture • Representing relations • Children and youth in culture This book includes commentaries from expert academics from outside of India, providing a bridge between academic reality and cultural discourse and throwing fresh light on the everyday events presented in the text. Cultural Realities of Being will be essential reading for those studying Cross Cultural Psychology as well as those interested in social representation and identity.

Gilbert Herdt is Director of the Program in Human Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, where he is also Professor of Human Sexuality Studies and Anthropology.

BEING CULTURAL is an ambitious collection of original readings which introduces students to key theory and key issues within cultural studies and popular culture. Bringing together established writers such as Andy Bennett, Douglas Kellner, Chris Rojek, Barry Smart and John Storey with academics researching cultural texts in new and innovative ways, the book challenges our common-sense notions of 'culture', placing debates centrally within the power dynamics and dominant meaning-making of capitalist society. In understanding the production and consumption of such texts, the book outlines theoretical discussion from the Frankfurt School, British Cultural Studies, Semiotics, Subcultural theory, and Postmodernism, as well as investigating special topics such as digital media, sport, advertising, social networking sites, celebrity, video games, the body, cinema, reality TV, and issues of gender and ethnicity. With a total of twenty-five chapters presented in a user-friendly style -- including chapter summaries and suggestions for further reading from the authors -- this is an essential text for any student new to the subject.

We frequently engage with that which we consciously perceive not to be real, yet fantasy, despite its pervasive presence and strong role in everyday life through its connection to identities, communities, desires, and meanings, has yet to be properly defined and researched. This book examines fantasy from a performance theory perspective. Drawing on multidisciplinary literature, it presents ethnographic and art-based research on live action role-playing games to explore fantasy as a bodily and negotiated phenomenon that involves various kinds of engagement with one’s surroundings. Overall, this book is a study of various forms and roles that fantasy can take on as part of contemporary Western culture. The study suggests that fantasy emerges as a different type of interpretation of normalised performance and reality, and can thus provide individuals with the tools to wield agency in everyday life. The book will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural and media studies, literature and performance studies.

This book concentrates on the changing patterns of work and global social order as a result of COVID-19. It scrutinizes these changes in order to point out the possible reasons for these changes following COVID-19. It sheds light on the differences between the condition of underdeveloped and developed countries, focusing on how they struggle to find ways of coping. The pandemic has changed the global social order. It has an impact on every aspect of life around the globe, from individual relationships to institutional operations and international collaborations. Societies are endeavoring to protect themselves despite severe restrictions, while the pandemic continues to upset family relations and overturn governance. COVID-19 has made it clearer than ever before that where many strains on the social sector occur, the current global system, with its interconnectedness and vulnerabilities, is under threat. Due to the changing patterns of economic and societal elements caused by COVID-19, further research is urgently needed to analyze these changing trends. The book portrays what work and the global social order will look like in the future. It is essential reading for anyone interested in these changes and the pst-COVID-19 reality.