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This volume addresses the dynamics of materiality over time and space. In cross-cultural, multi-temporal and interdisciplinary studies the authors examine how things gain meaning and status, generate a multitude of emotions, and feed into the propagation of myths, narratives and discourses. The book is divided according to four themes: soft objects, stoic stories, consuming and the collectable, and waste and technologies. The first section discusses the meanings of the lived environment on the individual and national levels. The second section provides specific examples on the role of things in identity construction. The third section focuses on historical and contemporary aspects of consumption and collecting. The phenomena under scrutiny in the fourth section are moral dilemmas associated with and representations of dirt/waste and advancements in science and technology. Presenting diverse case studies of material culture, the volume points to rich interdisciplinary approaches in cultural theory.

"This volume explores culture-bound syndromes, defined as a pattern of symptoms (mental, physical, and/or relational) experienced only by members of a specific cultural group and recognized as a disorder by members of those groups, and their coverage in popular culture. Encompassing a wide range of popular culture genres and mediums - from film and TV to literature, graphic novels and anime - the chapters offer a dynamic mix of approaches to analyze how popular culture has engaged with specific culture-bound syndromes such as hwabyung, hikikomori, taijin kyofusho, zou huo ru mo, sati, amok, Cuban hysteria, voodoo death, and others. Spanning a global and interdisciplinary remit, this first-of-its-kind anthology will allow scholars and students of popular culture, media and film studies, comparative literature, medical humanities, cultural psychiatry and philosophy to explore simultaneously a diversity of popular cultures and culturally rooted mental health disorders"--

Enthält Rezensionen u.a. von Almond, G. A.: The civic culture : political attitudes and democracy in five nations / G. A. Almond and S. Verba. - Princeton, NJ : Princeton Univ. Press, 1963. + Almond, G. A.: The civic culture revisited / G. A. Almond and S. Verba. - London : Sage, 1989

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- A note to the reader -- 1. Introduction -- 'Culture' at The Department for Culture, Media and Sport -- Culture as a Perspective -- The Dangers of Culture -- 2. Landscape -- Culture into Nature -- Nature into Culture -- Cultural Explanation and Its Limits -- 3. A whole way of life -- Patterns of Life -- Dirt as a Cultural System -- The Value and Limits of Cosmology -- 4. Politics -- From Politics to Culture and Back Again -- Religion, Culture, and Women-Who-Cover -- Culture and Capitalism and The Anthropocene -- 5. Experience -- An Argument for Reimagining Culture -- Experiential Maps -- Cultural Aesthetics and Cultural Analysis -- 6. Death -- From My Diary -- In the Kingdom of the Sick -- Teaching Death -- 7. Two cheers for culture? -- Guarding Against Cultural Reductionism -- Embracing Collective Intimacies -- Finding Productive Distance -- Engaging With Culture that Matters -- Bibliography -- Index.