- Beyond Birth
- Kyung Moon Hwang
- The social structure of contemporary Korea contains strong echoes of the hierarchical principles and patterns governing stratification in the Choson dynasty (1392-1910): namely, birth and one's position in the bureaucracy. As the author shows, the political disruptions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, rewarded talent instead of birth. In turn, these groups' newfound standing as part of the governing elite allowed them to break into, and often dominate, the cultural, literary, and artistic spheres as well as politics, education, and business.
- Hardcover 2005
- Celebrating the Family
- Elizabeth H. Pleck
- Elizabeth Pleck examines two centuries of changing family traditions and finds a complicated process of change in the way Americans celebrate holidays, as well as the life cycle rituals of birth, coming of age, marriage, and death. This multicultural, comparative history of American family celebration, rich in detail and spiced with telling anecdotes and illustrations and a keen sense of irony, offers insight into the significance of ethnicity and consumer culture in shaping what people regard as the most memorable moments of family life.
- Hardcover 2000 / Paperback
- Common Places
- Svetlana Boym
- Boym provides a view of Russia that is historically informed, replete with unexpected detail, and everywhere stamped with authority. Alternating analysis with personal accounts of Russian life, she conveys the foreignness of Russia and examines its peculiar conceptions of private life and common good, of Culture and Trash, of sincerity and banality.
- Hardcover 1995 / Paperback 1995
- The Southern Past
- W. Fitzhugh Brundage
- Since the Civil War whites and blacks have struggled over the meanings and uses of the Southern past. The Southern Past argues that these battles are ultimately about who has the power to determine what we remember of the past, and whether that remembrance will honor all Southerners or only select groups.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2008