Grounded Identities: Territory and Belonging in the Medieval and Early Modern Middle East and Mediterranean is a collection of essays on attachment to specific lands including Kurdistan, Andalusia and the Maghrib, and geographical Syria in the pre-modern Islamicate world. Together these essays put a premium on the affective and cultural dimensions of such attachments, fluctuations in the meaning and significance of lands in the face of historical transformations and, at the same time, the real and persistent qualities of lands and human attachments to them over long periods of time. These essays demonstrate that grounded identities are persistent and never static. Contributors are: Zayde Antrim, Alexander Elinson, Mary Hoyt Halavais, Boris James, Steve Tamari.

Globalisation is not the enemy of nationalism; instead, as this book shows, the two forces have developed together through modern history. Malešević challenges dominant views which see nationalism as a declining social force. He explains why the recent escalations of populist nationalism throughout the world do not represent a social anomaly but are, in fact, a historical norm. By focusing on ever-increasing organisational capacity, greater ideological penetration and networks of micro-solidarity, Malešević shows how and why nationalism has become deeply grounded in the everyday life of modern human beings. The author explores the social dynamics of these grounded nationalisms via an analysis of varied contexts, from Ireland to the Balkans. His findings show that increased ideological diffusion and the rising coercive capacities of states and other organisations have enabled nationalism to expand and establish itself as the dominant operative ideology of modernity.

How do lesbians and gays negotiate their sexual identities in mental health care contexts? How do they manage the institutional homophobia and heterosexism embedded in health care practice and practitioners? Using interpretive phenomenology, Hazel Platzer overturns limiting dualisms to describe the ways in which lesbians and gays are silenced and pathologized in their mental health care encounters, how they resist, and how their resistance can restrict access to care. She highlights the difficulties of researching a sensitive topic with a relatively “hidden” population, and devises innovative techniques for handling bias and a multi-methods approach to the phenomenological study of experience and identities. She then offers proactive steps toward creating a health care environment in which lesbian and gay identities are normalized, improving both access to and quality of health care.

The world is flat? Maybe not, says this paradigm-shifting study of globalism's impact on a region legendarily resistant to change. The U.S. South, long defined in terms of its differences with the U.S. North, is moving out of this national and oppositional frame of reference into one that is more international and integrative. Likewise, as the South (home to UPS, CNN, KFC, and other international brands) goes global, people are emigrating there from countries like India, Mexico, and Vietnam--and becoming southerners. Much has been made of the demographic and economic aspects of this shift. Until now, though, no one has systematically shown what globalism means to the southern sense of self. Anthropologist James L. Peacock looks at the South of both the present and the past to develop the idea of "grounded globalism," in which global forces and local cultures rooted in history, tradition, and place reverberate against each other in mutually sustaining and energizing ways. Peacock's focus is on a particular part of the world; however, his model is widely relevant: "Some kind of grounding in locale is necessary to human beings." Grounded Globalism draws on perspectives from fields as diverse as ecology, anthropology, religion, and history to move us beyond the model, advanced by such scholars as C. Vann Woodward, that depicts the South as a region paralyzed by the burden of its past. Peacock notes that, while globalism may lift old burdens, it may at the same time impose new ones. He also maintains that earlier regional identities have not been replaced by the rootless cosmopolitanism of cyberspace or other abstracted systems. Attachments to place remain, even as worldwide markets erase boundaries and flatten out differences and distinctions among nations. Those attachments exert their own pressures back on globalism, says Peacock, with subtle strengths we should not discount.

“In my bibliographies there are no women in the evangelical tradition, and no Australian women scholars.” This unique volume addresses this gap, with eighteen biblically rich and academically rigorous chapters by established and emerging Australian women scholars in the evangelical tradition. The authors consider our relationship with the land and Indigenous peoples, neighborhood, embodiment, (dis)ability, abortion, leadership, work, architecture, the media, Song of Songs and domestic violence, and Jeremiah and weaponized rape, and demonstrate recent methodologies such as a social identity reading of Exodus, sensory readings of Psalms and John’s Gospel, and discipleship readings of Mary and Martha and the woman at the well. A contemporary Kriol psalm and stories of pioneering Australian women theological students and teachers complete the volume. Valuable for students and teachers across Bible, theology, ministry, and practice subjects, this book is an essential inclusion in any theological library.

This volume of essays by Naomi Scheman brings together her views on epistemic and socio-political issues, views that draw on a critical reading of Wittgenstein as well as on liberatory movements and theories, all in the service of a fundamental reorientation of epistemology. For some theorists, epistemology is an essentially foundationalist and hence discredited enterprise; for others-particularly analytic epistemologists--it remains rigorously segregated from political concerns. Scheman makes a compelling case for the necessity of thinking epistemologically in fundamentally altered ways. Arguing that it is an illusion of privilege to think that we can do without usable articulations of concepts such as truth, reality, and objectivity, she maintains (as in the title of one of her essays) that epistemology needs to be "resuscitated" as an explicitly political endeavor, with trustworthiness at its heart. While each essay contributes to a specific conversation, taken together they argue for addressing theoretical questions as they arise concretely. Truth, reality, objectivity, and other concepts that problematically rest on shifting ground are more than philosophical toys, and the ground-shifting these essays enact is a move away from abstruse theorizing-analytic and post-structuralist alike. Following Wittgenstein's injunctions to just look, to attend to the "rough ground" of everyday practices, Scheman argues for finding philosophical insight in such acts of attention and in the difficulties that beset them. These essays are an attempt to grasp something in particular, to get a handle on a set of problems, and collectively they represent a fresh model of passionate philosophical engagement.

Classic and cutting-edge writings on games, spanning nearly 50 years of game analysis and criticism, by game designers, game journalists, game fans, folklorists, sociologists, and media theorists. The Game Design Reader is a one-of-a-kind collection on game design and criticism, from classic scholarly essays to cutting-edge case studies. A companion work to Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's textbook Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, The Game Design Reader is a classroom sourcebook, a reference for working game developers, and a great read for game fans and players. Thirty-two essays by game designers, game critics, game fans, philosophers, anthropologists, media theorists, and others consider fundamental questions: What are games and how are they designed? How do games interact with culture at large? What critical approaches can game designers take to create game stories, game spaces, game communities, and new forms of play? Salen and Zimmerman have collected seminal writings that span 50 years to offer a stunning array of perspectives. Game journalists express the rhythms of game play, sociologists tackle topics such as role-playing in vast virtual worlds, players rant and rave, and game designers describe the sweat and tears of bringing a game to market. Each text acts as a springboard for discussion, a potential class assignment, and a source of inspiration. The book is organized around fourteen topics, from The Player Experience to The Game Design Process, from Games and Narrative to Cultural Representation. Each topic, introduced with a short essay by Salen and Zimmerman, covers ideas and research fundamental to the study of games, and points to relevant texts within the Reader. Visual essays between book sections act as counterpoint to the writings. Like Rules of Play, The Game Design Reader is an intelligent and playful book. An invaluable resource for professionals and a unique introduction for those new to the field, The Game Design Reader is essential reading for anyone who takes games seriously.

Caging the Rainbow explores the lives of Aborigines in the small regional town of Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia. Francesca Merlan combines ethnography and theory to grapple with issues surrounding the debate about the authenticity of contemporary cultural activity. Throughout, the vulnerability of Fourth World peoples to others' representations of them and the ethical problems this poses are kept in view.

How do Russian and Czech nonbinary people use language to construct their identity? This question has hardly been addressed so far, so this volume describes and analyzes the identity-driven linguistic variation of Russian and Czech nonbinary speakers. If a linguistic feature indexes the gender binary in the standard variety, then a nonbinary speaker – who desires to express their gender identity – in interaction employs an alternative that lacks this feature to perform and thus linguistically construct nonbinary identity. This hypothesis is investigated using a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods, banking on data from corpora and surveys. Among the most relevant practices that have emerged are the overt introduction of gender identity labels as well as pronouns and/or chosen agreement patterns into discourse, the alternation of gender agreement patterns, and the use of plural endings with singular meaning.

An essential collection that constructs the arguments of similarity and difference dividing and uniting women In recent years, identity has come to be seen as a process rather than a fact or deterministic force. Yet, recognizable identity traits continue to draw people together and provide them with a sense of empowering commonality. Although the plasticity afforded identity has freed up rigid definitions and guidelines for affiliation, some believe that nebulous demarcations of identity may deprive women of a solid position from which to effectively contest centers of power. Bringing together articles by well-known authors and theorists such as Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Daphne Patai, Barbara Smith, Marilyn Frye, Shane Phelan, Leila J. Rupp, Hazel Carby, and Adrienne Rich with lesser-known writers and scholars, this broad-based anthology ranges widely from personal narratives to empirical research. The book unpacks issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and age, contributing a mélange of sharp, lively perspectives to current debate. In a postmodern era of feminism, how do women come to identify, organize and mobilize themselves within a complex global network of relationships? Identity Politics in the Women's Movement offers critical examination of the inescapable role of identity in academic and activist feminism and the opportunities, challenges and conflicts identity politics pose.