One of natures most hopeful sights is a beam of golden sunshine burning through the dark and churning clouds of a raging storm that has just subsided. That is the very picture of Galinas story, quintessentially Russian and very moving; one that will infuse the reader with a feeling of intense hope. It is a must-read for anyone facing an oncoming storm, standing in the midst of one, or still reeling in the devastation of tribulation, tragedy, and loss. Galina grew up in the post-Stalin years of the Soviet Union when Christianity was still the target of state oppression. As a young woman she joined an underground church in the city of Krasnodar and boldly shared her faith. After a romance with a tragic ending she struck out on her own seeking happiness in the sunny seaside city of Yalta on the coast of the Black Sea. Instead her life became an epic struggle of hope versus despair, life and death, even while she was surrounded by the beauty of tsarist palaces and beaches. Her faith had been shaken to its foundations and Soviet society collapsed around her in political and economic chaos. She immigrated to America hoping for a better life. But darkness followed and within its shadows a cataclysmic act played out in Fresno, California, on the evening of January 22, 1999. The horrific drama riveted the attention of the entire city and became the subject of television and newspaper headlines. It left people shocked, bewildered, and saddened. But Galina refused to let despair conquer her. This is the story of Galinas Hope.

Notions of magic and healing have been changing over past years and are now understood as reflecting local ideas of power and agency, as well as structures of self, subjectivity and affect. This study focuses on contemporary urban Russia and, through exploring social conditions, conveys the experience of living that makes magic logical. By following people's own interpretations of the work of magic, the author succeeds in unraveling the logic of local practice and local understanding of affliction, commonly used to diagnose the experiences of illness and misfortune.

It’s not about willpower, and it’s not about the food. Most people blame their eating behaviors on a lack of willpower. Eating intuitively hasn’t worked. Eating less and moving more? Trying to change your body image? These only last so long. Many people are worried that they can never have a healthy relationship with food. Peace with Self, Peace with Food looks past all that, and gets to the heart of what causes our battles with food. Through her years of training and practice in trauma healing — as well as her own reconciliation with food and self — Galina Denzel has developed a program to help readers embark on their own journey to healing. Personal and ancestral traumas inform behaviors around food, and Peace with Self, Peace with Food will help you identify patterns laid down even before you were born. Patterns that have long contributed to your eating behaviors, and continue to affect your relationship with food today. Through the exercises in Peace with Self, Peace with Food you will come to understand your eating habits and the neurobiological network that has held them in place until now. What’s more, you will see food, your mind, and your body in a new light. Not as enemies to be tamed, but as allies that can teach you how to care for yourself, and for your health, with love.

While social scientists, beginning with Weber, envisioned a secularized world, religion today is forthrightly becoming a defining feature of life all around the globe. The complex connections between religion and politics, and the ways in which globalization shapes these processes, are central themes explored in this volume by leading scholars in the field of religion. Does the holism of numerous past and present day cosmologies mean that religions with their holistic orientations are integral to human existence? What happens when political ideologies and projects are framed as transcendental truths and justified by Divine authority? How are individual and collective identities shaped by religious rhetoric, and what are the consequences? Can mass murder, deemed terrorism, be understood as a form of ritual sacrifice, and if so, what are the implications for our sensibilities and practices as scholars and citizens? Using empirical material, from historical analyses of established religions to the everyday strife of marginalized groups such as migrants and dissident movements, this volume deepens the understanding of processes that shape the contemporary world.

In this book, renowned anthropologist Michael Jackson draws on philosophy, biography, ethnography, and literature to explore the meanings and affordances of friendship--a relationship just as significant as, yet somehow different from, kinship and love. Beginning with Aristotle's accounts of friendship as a political virtue and Montaigne's famous essay on friendship as a form of love, Jackson examines the tension between the political and personal resonances of friendship in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, the biography of the Indian historian Brijen Gupta, and the oral narratives of a Kuranko storyteller, Keti Ferenke Koroma. He offers reflections on childhood friends, imaginary friends, lifelong friendships, and friendships with animals. He ruminates particularly on the complications of friendship in the context of anthropological fieldwork, exploring the contradiction between the egalitarian spirit of friendship on the one hand and, on the other, the power imbalance between ethnographers and their interlocutors. Through these stories, Jackson explores the unpredictable interplay of mutability and mutuality in intimate human relationships, and the critical importance of choice in forming friendship--what it means to be loyal to friends through good times and bad, and even in the face of danger. Through a blend of memoir, theory, ethnography, and fiction, Jackson shows us how the elective affinities of friendship transcend culture, gender, and age, and offer us perennial means of taking stock of our lives and getting a measure of our own self-worth.

Michael Jackson extends his path-breaking work in existential anthropology by focusing on the interplay between two modes of human existence: that of participating in other peoples’ lives and that of turning inward to one’s self. Grounding his discussion in the subtle shifts between being acted upon and taking action, Jackson shows how the historical complexities and particularities found in human interactions reveal the dilemmas, conflicts, cares, and concerns that shape all of our lives. Through portraits of individuals encountered in the course of his travels, including friends and family, and anthropological fieldwork pursued over many years in such places as Sierra Leone and Australia, Jackson explores variations on this theme. As he describes the ways we address and negotiate the vexed relationships between "I" and "we"—the one and the many—he is also led to consider the place of thought in human life.

In the thrilling conclusion to Jon Skovron's epic fantasy trilogy that began with The Ranger of Marzanna, allies and enemies alike must band together to defeat an evil on a scale never before seen—and this time, the Gods are on the battlefield. As Vittorio’s empire enacts its bloody reign, the Uaine now behind him after a stunning betrayal, a reunited Sonya and Sebastian must embark on a journey to distant lands to amend past wrongs—and find unlikely allies along the way. In far Raiz, Jorge has his hands full enough with the devastation the Empire left behind. But the battle isn’t over, and the sovereignty of his nation will depend on his ability to band together the ancient houses—and recruiting a figure straight out of legend. Galina, now Queen of Izmoroz, rules her land with an iron fist in a velvet glove. But heavy is the crown, and enemies lie in wait both within and without her dominion. To realize her vision for a free Izmoroz at last, she’ll have to fight with much more than politics.