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This book examines the relevance of some major aspects and assumptions of contemporary social and cultural theory to one society that has a very different history and conception of its self-identity from the Western ones in which the modern social sciences have almost exclusively arisen. Japan presents arguably the biggest challenge to the preoccupations and epistemiology of much conventional sociological and cultural thinking. The issue is approached through the concept of "postmodernity", which has only recently been applied to Japan. The value of this construction is explored through an exa

"Human Heartbeat Detected is a collection of essays that explores how we are wonderfully and terrifyingly human. Hitting on themes such as trauma, emotional abuse, marriage, mental illness, and grief, these essays delve into how humans are simultaneously beautiful and terrible to one another. Though regardless of how we might make each other shatter, our hearts continue beating-even when we might not want them to-and we wade through the wreckage of our lives to find ways to survive. With exquisite language and captivating storytelling, the essays in Human Heartbeat Detected face what it means to be human"--

Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Chapter 1: The Cultural and Civilizational Roots of Our Planetary Crisis -- The Meaning of Sustainability -- The Cultural Dimensions of Sustainability -- Culture and Development Revisited -- Approaching Sustainable Cultures -- Bibliography -- Chapter 2: Culture in Crisis -- Consumption and Its Vicissitudes -- The Culture of Violence -- Life Enhancing/Life Denying -- Bibliography -- Chapter 3: Cultural Resources for Sustainability -- Reclaiming Consumption -- Art and the Arts of Sustainability -- The Religious Dimensions of Sustainability -- In Summary

The question of 'postmodernity' that has swept Western academic and intellectual circles raises critical comparative questions. Do societies that have not experienced the same historical development as the West pass inevitably through modernity into postmodernity, or can they skip such stages altogether? Japan, the only non-Western society to develop independently a fully-fledged capitalist-industrialist economy, poses such fundamental questions to social theory. Is Japan in fact 'unique' and as such is it a society which escapes the net of conventional sociological abstractions? The book q

Culture, Development and Social Theory places culture back at the centre of debates in development studies. It introduces new ways of conceptualizing culture by linking development studies to studies of social movements, religion and the notion of 'social suffering'. John Clammer expertly argues that, in the current world crises, any conception of post-capitalist society requires cultural, as well as economic and political, dimensions

The philosophical question of whether moral standards apply in art and the practical one of whether the arts can be vehicles of positive social transformation run through a great deal of social theory. In this article, these issues are discussed through an examination of Mahatma Gandhi's approach to art and in particular his views on music and visual arts as they formed part of his personal world view and his socio-political programme. The article contextualises this in relation to Gandhi's over-arching concern with the pursuit of truth and its theistic basis, his relationship to certain aspects of classical Indian philosophy and in particular the status of rasa among the four traditional purusharthas, and his relationship with Rabindranath Tagore and the artists at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan, in particular Nandalal Bose. The article suggests that Gandhi was far from uninterested in aesthetic matters, but that the key to his thought lies in his holistic approach to both philosophy and lifestyle where the arts play an important role when integrated with ethical and religious demands.