This collection of essays engages two of the most fundamental social and political issues of our time: community and identity. Wrestling with the perplexities of these two issues within the Africana world, the contributors delve into the influences of a postmodern world of globalization with outdated, crumbling forms of identity and sociality. In the wake of such an order, new forms of identity and community must be established. Birt has collected an informed group of contributors here, who lay the foundation for a new approach to finding community and identity in the Africana world.

The understanding of identity in relation to community has been a focus of academic studies in recent years. An exclusive self-understanding of the identity of one's own community, coupled with a hostile attitude toward other communities, often leads to communal conflicts. In particular, it is important to notice the significance of religion in the re-shaping of community identities in this process. This volume focuses first on communal or corporate understanding of identity. Secondly, this volume will assess the topic of identity from the perspectives of theology and religious studies. Thirdly, the volume will seek to address the issue of interaction between religious communities and wider society by looking at case studies from the Yorkshire area.

This exciting new undergraduate textbook introduces the reader to the broad and complex relationship between sport, culture and society, and critically examines the key assumptions that we hold with regard to the nature of sport.

Liberal education aspires to excellence through the cultivation of free human beings who excel in thought, word, and deed. But what exactly is excellence, and why do we admire it? How do we conceive of what is excellent? What constitutes excellence—either for human beings, or in the realms of philosophy, literature, science, and politics? Why is excellence an aim of liberal education? What kinds of texts, courses, and inquiries contribute to achieving this end? Such questions animate the studies herein. The essays in this volume reflect on the idea of excellence embedded within core texts, as well as how such texts influence and ennoble higher education. In its chapters, we consider rival forms of excellence from ancient Greece and Rome, through modern Europe and America, and beyond. The world of antiquity and its accounts of excellence, as represented in the works of Euripides, Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, and Cicero, are here brought into dialogue with diverse modern perspectives on excellence, as articulated by Shakespeare, Descartes, Newton, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Austen, Darwin, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Nietzsche, as well as (more recently) by John Dewey, Martin Luther King Jr., Cardinal Newman, and Eboo Patel. Our desire to seek and understand excellence transcends borders, and the purpose of this volume is to help perpetuate in contemporary higher education the study of core texts essential to the cultivation of excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.

Annotation "The concept of community has become central to constructions of Spanish identities, since the Transition to democracy. Contemporary Spain witnesses a political, social, and economic resurgence of community, which both cuts across and is prioritized over nation. Yet, few studies of contemporary Spanish culture deal with this concept. This book aims, therefore, to fill a gap in Spanish cultural studies by providing an in-depth analysis of the intersections of theories, narratives and concepts of community identities across a broad range of media. Literature, film, music, and photography are analysed here in order to explore the diverse means by which community is imagined and constructed. This is a strongly interdisciplinary study, bringing together cultural studies and ethnography. The specific 'texts' that are analysed are located within a larger framework provided by Spain's involvement in processes of globalization. Unusual in this study, therefore, is the use of fieldwork and interview, as well as the application of the work of cultural theorists to the Spanish context." "This book, thus, extends the field of Spanish cultural studies through its original and deliberate examination of community; it is equally relevant to a more general reading public, interested in the diverse media covered here." "By the same token, this book is of relevance to scholars in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, through its exploration and application of the ideas of theorists of modernity, space, and time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The introduction of Christianity into traditional societies has been the subject of numerous studies. Few of these studies, however, have adequately examined the way that this introduction affects power relationships in a community. In this, the third volume in the American Society of Missiology's dissertation series, A. Sue Russell attempts to advance the discourse on Christianity and social change by showing how a new social institution, the local church, both influences and is influenced by existing sociocultural power relationships. Building on her extensive research into the Tagal Murut, Dr. Russell clearly demonstrates that the introduction of Christianity created a dynamic that produced new social relations and power structures in Tagal society. With its unique insights into this crucial dynamic, Conversion, Identity, and Power stands as an important contribution to the sociological and missiological literature exploring the impact of Christianity on traditional societies. Book jacket.

This title examines the relationship between identity and technology in the learning and lives of young people.