Laura J. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226501239
- eISBN:
- 9780226501406
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226501406.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This book provides a history of the American natural and health foods industry and its leadership in the social movement oriented to spreading a natural foods way of life. The natural foods case is ...
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This book provides a history of the American natural and health foods industry and its leadership in the social movement oriented to spreading a natural foods way of life. The natural foods case is used to consider the broader question of what possibilities open up and what limits emerge when private enterprise is involved in movements advocating for broad-based social and cultural change. Beginning with the first American natural foods advocates in the early nineteenth century, and continuing to the early twenty-first century, this history shows how the leadership of the natural foods industry was central to transforming natural foods consumption from a culturally marginal activity associated with religious minorities, immigrants, the elderly, and the infirm, to a hip lifestyle associated with the young, the fit, and the affluent. In the process, industry helped lead the natural foods movement away from an emphasis on asceticism and simple living, and towards a valuation of indulgence and material comforts. The book argues that instead of acting as a singularly eradicalizing force, the natural and health foods industry reinforced the natural foods movement's often radical rejection of medical expertise. The natural foods case demonstrates that business interests promote a flexible approach to cultural meanings and symbols, which undermines cultural authority and catalyzes cultural change.Less
This book provides a history of the American natural and health foods industry and its leadership in the social movement oriented to spreading a natural foods way of life. The natural foods case is used to consider the broader question of what possibilities open up and what limits emerge when private enterprise is involved in movements advocating for broad-based social and cultural change. Beginning with the first American natural foods advocates in the early nineteenth century, and continuing to the early twenty-first century, this history shows how the leadership of the natural foods industry was central to transforming natural foods consumption from a culturally marginal activity associated with religious minorities, immigrants, the elderly, and the infirm, to a hip lifestyle associated with the young, the fit, and the affluent. In the process, industry helped lead the natural foods movement away from an emphasis on asceticism and simple living, and towards a valuation of indulgence and material comforts. The book argues that instead of acting as a singularly eradicalizing force, the natural and health foods industry reinforced the natural foods movement's often radical rejection of medical expertise. The natural foods case demonstrates that business interests promote a flexible approach to cultural meanings and symbols, which undermines cultural authority and catalyzes cultural change.
Japonica Brown-Saracino
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226361116
- eISBN:
- 9780226361390
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226361390.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
Drawing on an ethnography of lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) residents in Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Greenfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine; How Places Make Us shows ...
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Drawing on an ethnography of lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) residents in Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Greenfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine; How Places Make Us shows how LBQ migrants craft a unique sense of self that corresponds to their new homes. The book demonstrates that sexual identities are responsive to city ecology. Despite the fact that the LBQ residents of all four cities share many demographic and cultural traits, their approaches to sexual identity politics and to ties with other LBQ individuals and heterosexual residents vary markedly by where they live. Subtly distinct local ecologies shape what it feels like to be a sexual minority, including the degree to which one feels accepted, how many other LBQ individuals one encounters in daily life, and how often a city declares its embrace of difference. In short, city ecology shapes how one “does” LBQ in a specific place. Ultimately, the book reveals that there isn’t one general way of approaching sexual identity because humans are not only social, but fundamentally local creatures. Places make us much more than we might think.Less
Drawing on an ethnography of lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) residents in Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Greenfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine; How Places Make Us shows how LBQ migrants craft a unique sense of self that corresponds to their new homes. The book demonstrates that sexual identities are responsive to city ecology. Despite the fact that the LBQ residents of all four cities share many demographic and cultural traits, their approaches to sexual identity politics and to ties with other LBQ individuals and heterosexual residents vary markedly by where they live. Subtly distinct local ecologies shape what it feels like to be a sexual minority, including the degree to which one feels accepted, how many other LBQ individuals one encounters in daily life, and how often a city declares its embrace of difference. In short, city ecology shapes how one “does” LBQ in a specific place. Ultimately, the book reveals that there isn’t one general way of approaching sexual identity because humans are not only social, but fundamentally local creatures. Places make us much more than we might think.
Violaine Roussel
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226486802
- eISBN:
- 9780226487137
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226487137.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This book takes the reader behind the scenes in Hollywood into the unknown world of talent agencies. Based on unprecedented fieldwork (122 interviews, as well as in situ observations at agencies), it ...
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This book takes the reader behind the scenes in Hollywood into the unknown world of talent agencies. Based on unprecedented fieldwork (122 interviews, as well as in situ observations at agencies), it explores the day-to-day activity of talent agents and unveils how they contribute to shaping artistic careers and projects. The agencies are central spaces for professional socialization in Hollywood. It’s in this organizational setting that agents learn how to build and maintain strong ties with key counterparts, first and foremost artists and production professionals. The book examines what "having relationships" really means for these professionals. It looks at the ties that the agents create with their clients – in the form of enchanted bonds that are at the same time power relations. It challenges existing approaches to Hollywood networks by analyzing how specialized professional circles form across organizational boundaries and tie together talent representatives, artists, and production professionals over long periods of time. These interconnections are crucial for understanding how movies, and entertainment products in general, are made in Hollywood: it’s in such circles that artistic worth (quality) and economic value (price) are inseparably evaluated and attributed to people and projects. This study explores this intertwining of creative and economic power. It shows how “talent” or “influence” is recognized to Hollywood players. It therefore sheds new light on the production of popular culture, as well as on today’s transformation of Hollywood and the inseparable redefinition of entertainment.Less
This book takes the reader behind the scenes in Hollywood into the unknown world of talent agencies. Based on unprecedented fieldwork (122 interviews, as well as in situ observations at agencies), it explores the day-to-day activity of talent agents and unveils how they contribute to shaping artistic careers and projects. The agencies are central spaces for professional socialization in Hollywood. It’s in this organizational setting that agents learn how to build and maintain strong ties with key counterparts, first and foremost artists and production professionals. The book examines what "having relationships" really means for these professionals. It looks at the ties that the agents create with their clients – in the form of enchanted bonds that are at the same time power relations. It challenges existing approaches to Hollywood networks by analyzing how specialized professional circles form across organizational boundaries and tie together talent representatives, artists, and production professionals over long periods of time. These interconnections are crucial for understanding how movies, and entertainment products in general, are made in Hollywood: it’s in such circles that artistic worth (quality) and economic value (price) are inseparably evaluated and attributed to people and projects. This study explores this intertwining of creative and economic power. It shows how “talent” or “influence” is recognized to Hollywood players. It therefore sheds new light on the production of popular culture, as well as on today’s transformation of Hollywood and the inseparable redefinition of entertainment.
Robert S. Jansen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226487304
- eISBN:
- 9780226487588
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226487588.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Comparative and Historical Sociology
Politicians and their political parties tend to act in routine ways, rarely deviating from conventional practice in a given time and place. Where, then, do new political practices come from? When new ...
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Politicians and their political parties tend to act in routine ways, rarely deviating from conventional practice in a given time and place. Where, then, do new political practices come from? When new practices are developed, what shapes their characteristics? And what does it take for them to get assimilated into the toolkit of routine go-to options? Drawing on pragmatist theories of social action, this book elaborates a novel theoretical approach to these questions of political innovation. It then applies the approach to explain a critical development in Peruvian political history: the emergence in 1931 of a distinctively Latin American style of populist mobilization. Prior to Peru’s 1931 presidential election, nothing like populist mobilization had been practiced in the country on a national scale to seek elected office; after this moment, the practice was an established option in the Peruvian political repertoire. Ultimately, populist mobilization emerged in Peru in 1931 because newly empowered outsider political actors had the socially and experientially conditioned understanding, vision, and capacities to recognize the limitations of routine political practice and to modify, transpose, invent, and recombine practices in a way that took advantage of new opportunities that were afforded by the social and political situation. This finding offers new insights to historians of Peru, students of historical sociology and contentious politics, and anyone interested in the social and political origins of populism.Less
Politicians and their political parties tend to act in routine ways, rarely deviating from conventional practice in a given time and place. Where, then, do new political practices come from? When new practices are developed, what shapes their characteristics? And what does it take for them to get assimilated into the toolkit of routine go-to options? Drawing on pragmatist theories of social action, this book elaborates a novel theoretical approach to these questions of political innovation. It then applies the approach to explain a critical development in Peruvian political history: the emergence in 1931 of a distinctively Latin American style of populist mobilization. Prior to Peru’s 1931 presidential election, nothing like populist mobilization had been practiced in the country on a national scale to seek elected office; after this moment, the practice was an established option in the Peruvian political repertoire. Ultimately, populist mobilization emerged in Peru in 1931 because newly empowered outsider political actors had the socially and experientially conditioned understanding, vision, and capacities to recognize the limitations of routine political practice and to modify, transpose, invent, and recombine practices in a way that took advantage of new opportunities that were afforded by the social and political situation. This finding offers new insights to historians of Peru, students of historical sociology and contentious politics, and anyone interested in the social and political origins of populism.
Authors of the Storm
Bargaining for Brooklyn
Becoming Mead
The Black Child-Savers
The Catholic Social Imagination
Citizens, Cops, and Power
Contested Reproduction
The First Year Out
Framing Finance
