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American society is often characterized as a "guilt culture," as opposed to non-Western "shame cultures." But is this distinction still valid today? Through examples like shaming penalties in criminal law, "fat shaming," and cyberbullying on the social media, The Rise of the Shame Society: America's Change from a Guilt Culture into a Shame Culture shows how shame is increasingly invading our lives, leading to feelings of humiliation and depression. Marcel Van Herpen identifies three causes of this phenomenon: new childrearing methods, the advent of the social media, and a transformation of Western individualism. He weighs the arguments for and against a shame society and concludes that a guilt-centered approach remains preferable. Although shame increasingly permeates everyday life, the author argues that its rise is not a fatality. He emphasizes that shame is a dynamic phenomenon and that one can observe trends which lead to an increase of shame, as well as to its decrease. Examples of the latter are a growing sensitivity to the pain caused by anti-Black racism, the decrease of anti-LGBTQIA+ prejudices, and efforts to end the stigmatization of people with disabilities. Along with exploring its increase, The Rise of the Shame Society demonstrates that there are ways to overcome shame

This volume looks at the growing interest of different specialists in the problems associated with political discourse, in general, and parliamentary discourse, as one of its major sub-genres, in particular. Its main goal is to offer a deeper understanding of the diversity of parliamentary practices across space and time. The papers aim to highlight the role played by local social and historical factors, ideologies, collective mentalities, and social psychology in building up culture-specific...

"This paper reviews the literature on culture and economics, focusing primarily on the epidemiological approach. The epidemiological approach studies the variation in outcomes across different immigrant groups residing in the same country. Immigrants presumably differ in their cultures but share a common institutional and economic environment. This allows one to separate the effect of culture from the original economic and institutional environment. This approach has been used to study a variety of issues, including female labor force participaiton, fertility, labor market regulation, redistribution, growth, and financial development among others"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Case Studies -- Acknowledgements -- Chronology of 1950s American Culture -- Introduction: The Intellectual Context -- Chapter 1 Fiction and Poetry -- Chapter 2 Drama and Performance -- Chapter 3 Music and Radio -- Chapter 4 Film and Television -- Conclusion: Rethinking the 1950s -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Gamic Race: Logics of Difference in Videogame Culture makes race central to the study of videogames and videogame cultures. The project emphasizes the need for critical race theory in game studies to understand how race is informed and reshaped by the logics of gameplay resulting in the multi-layered, politically complex, and agile concept of gamic race. Displaced racialization, the project's other key concept, revises former studies of race in digital media that focus predominantly on representation, shifting interest to racialization occurring alongside or beyond bodies within game code and player experience. Moving along this trajectory, the first three chapters of Gamic Race explore different layers of gamic race and its formulation through displaced racialization: spatial, technologic, and discursive. The final chapter attempts to put theory into practice via an analysis of racially inflammatory raids of virtual worlds by users of the popular message board 4chan. These raids serve as a compelling but flawed model for future progressive performative interventions in gamespace. The conclusion considers how to progressively transform videogame design by placing African American expressive traditions, indie games, ethics, philosophy, and the interaction design of Erik Loyer in conversation. It's within this nexus that the project ends, gesturing toward a future paradigm of interaction and aesthetics within videogames that handles difference productively, and does not rely solely on strategies of visual inclusion.

▪ Abstract  After 1989, the interpretation of a complex set of disputes and exigencies settled into a conventional narrative of paradigm shift, in which the intellectual past became essentialized as "traditional area studies" and "classic anthropology." This approach obscures the processes of engagement (including dispute) by which disciplinary change occurred. The Area Studies1engagement with interdisciplinary colleagues and voices from the "area" has been critically important over several decades. Necessarily, the intellectual terms for addressing other interlocutors about regional conditions and events have differed according to the experience of the area in changing universalist politics and analysis. The area/anthropology intersection is examined for Africa (where race is basic to disputes), Latin America (where the place of culture and race in political economic arguments is central), and Europe (where culture and nation are at issue). During the 1990s a collective approach to areas emerged. Anthropologists, and particularly scholars of Asia, played a major role. The varied angles from different areas are linked by a broadly shared concern with the formation of emergent political communities and with themes of governmentality. Although the wider circulation of these ideas is promising, does it risk losing the grounding and accountability that Area Studies imposed (like it or not)? The events of September 11, 2001 and those that followed have made starkly clear the poverty and the dangers of essentialism, and the importance of focusing on the loci from which terms of argumentation in relation to power arise. Middle Eastern Studies is briefly discussed as "epicenter" for defining such an approach.

Incorporating cultural intelligence into joint intelligence : cultural intelligence and ethnographic intelligence theory / by Alexei J.D. Gavriel -- The use of evolutionary theory in modeling culture and cultural conflict / by Marc W.D. Tyrrell -- Employing data fusion in cultural analysis and COIN in tribal social systems / by Steffen Merten -- Weapons of the not so weak in Afghanistan : Pashtun agrarian structure and tribal organization / by Thomas J. Barfield -- Religious figures, insurgency, and jihad in southern Afghanistan / by Thomas H. Johnson -- The Durand line : tribal politics and Pakistan-Afghanistan relations / by Feroz Hassan Khan -- The maneuver company in Afghanistan : establishing counterinsurgency priorities at the district level / by Michael R. Fenzel -- Developing an IO environmental assessment in Khost province, Afghanistan : information operations at Provincial Reconstruction Team Khost in 2008 / by Robert J. Bebber -- Implementing a balanced counterinsurgency strategy in northeast Afghanistan, May 2007-July 2008 / by Nathan R. Springer

In going over submissions to Sibirica at the beginning of 2021, I found several articles related to culture and history in the Sakha Republic. Naturally, I thought it would be illuminating to bring them together to see how they might complement each other. Although this is not a typical special issue with a planned overarching theme, I found that these articles are not only geographically united but subtly reflective of broad underlying concerns—the revitalization and continuity of culture, and the agency of minoritized and indigenous peoples in striving for self-definition and survival. This issue is a way of "checking in" on the state of some of the diverse scholarly work happening in and on Sakha (Yakutia) in recent months and years—from the perspectives of researchers in anthropology, literary studies, history, and art history and criticism.

At the heart of Stripping, Sex, and Popular Culture lies a very personal story, of author Catherine Roach's response to the decision of her life-long best friend to become an exotic dancer. Catherine and Marie grew up together in Canada and moved to the USA to enroll in PhD programs at prestigious universities. For various reasons, Marie left her program and instead chose to work as a stripper. The author, at first troubled and yet fascinated by her friend's decision, follows Marie's journey into the world of stripping as an observer and analyst. She finds that this world raises complex questions about gender, sexuality, fantasy, feminism, and even spirituality. Moving from first hand interviews with dancers and others, the book broadens into a provocative and accessible examination of the current popularity of "striptease culture," with sex-saturated media imagery, thongs gone mainstream, and stripper aerobics at your local gym. Stripping, Sex, and Popular Culture scrutinizes the naked truth of a lucrative industry whose norms are increasingly at the center of contemporary society. Moving from first hand interviews with dancers and others, this book broadens into an accessible examination of the popularity of "striptease culture," with sex-saturated media imagery, and stripper aerobics at your local gym. It aims to scrutinize the truth of a industry whose norms are increasingly at the center of contemporary society. Catherine M. Roach is Associate Professor of New College, and Affiliated Faculty in Religious Studies and Women's Studies, at The University of Alabama, USA.