Based on extensive fieldwork in Calcutta, this book provides the first ethnography of how middle-class women in India understand and experience economic change through transformations of family life. It explores their ideas, practices and experiences of marriage, childbirth, reproductive change and their children's education, and addresses the impact that globalization is having on the new middle classes in Asia more generally from a domestic perspective. By focusing on maternity, the book explores subjective understandings of the way intimate relationships and the family are affected by India's liberalization policies and the neo-liberal ideologies that accompany through an analysis of often competing ideologies and multiple practices. And by drawing attention to women's agency as wives, mothers and grandmothers within these new frameworks, Domestic Goddesses discusses the experiences of different age groups affected by these changes. Through a careful analysis of women's narratives, the domestic sphere is shown to represent the key site for the remaking of Indian middle-class citizens in a global world.

Following the lead of a "hermeneutics of surprise" the book identifies, indeed, surprising new material, and offers unexpected new insights essential to the debate on the position of goddesses and women in ancient India.

A contemporary love story that highlights the similarities between the ancient Greek goddesses of mythology and Greek women of today. Greg is a Greek American journalist who comes to Greece to create a documentary for Greek women. Athena is a young lawyer who has written a thesis “Greek women are goddesses”. She undertakes the task to bring Gregg to contact with women willing to participate in his documentary. Athena is beautiful, dynamic, a modern-day goddess who holds a secret. The more Greg knows her the more he likes her until he falls in love with her. But there is a fiancée back in NYC... Through Athena’s thesis we come to know that Greek women have many similarities with the 6 Olympus Goddesses.

This innovative book examines changes in family practices and paid work in the 21st century. Focusing on highly qualified mothers who combine childcare with employment, it makes a valuable contribution to current debates. It also takes into account the views of fathers, making it a rounded study of family practice in the new millennium. Hard Labour puts forward some new and thought-provoking arguments about both mothers' and fathers' commitments to parenting and paid work. The first part of the book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive and readable overview of the literature on motherhood, fatherhood, family practices, and women in employment. The second part draws on a qualitative study of the lives of twenty mothers and their husbands or partners, each of whom is educated to degree level or above, and has at least one child under five. This study considers key aspects of the family lives of the men and women interviewed, including: How they manage their commitments to one another, their children and their professional work Sharing out family tasks such as childcare and housework At each stage, the empirical research is placed in the context of the literature referenced in the first part, and of the wider debate on career and motherhood. Hard Labour is essential reading for students and academics in sociology, family policy, family studies, women’s or gender studies and the sociology of management/employment.

Using case studies and analytical overviews this book explores the relationship between broadcasting and the intimate domestic sphere into which it is broadcast. It focuses on the period from the 1920s, when broadcasting was established in the UK, to the present day when both domesticity and broadcasting have become areas of anxiety and contestation. The entry of the 'wireless', and later television, into the home changed men and women's experience of domesticity, offering education and reducing isolation. But broadcasting did not merely change domestic leisure patterns, it actively intervened in constructing domesticity. The supposedly natural relationship between femininity and domesticity has structured the nature of broadcasting, and also the discourses which have emerged concerning the consumption of broadcast media. Contemporary broadcasting continues to be obsessed by domesticity, both in an idealised sense as well as portraying the domestic world as one of turmoil and crisis. This volume demonstrates that the relationship between broadcasting and domesticity is a key, and often neglected, feature of the cultural history of Britain in the last 100 years.

Uncovering the past through the lens of sacred travel, this travel book includes both academic and popular religious perspectives, and is filled with photographs of both famous and lesser-known locales from every corner of the world. Each site-specific explanation of the significance of Goddess today and in centuries past deftly combines current trends, academic theories, and historical insights. From the Middle East, to Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the images of feminine divinity presented in this work are as uniform in their beauty as they are diverse in cultural tradition. For each location-be it the shrines in Kyoto and Kamakura or the sites worshipping the Virgin Mary in Bolivia, France, Trinidad, and the Saut D'Eau Waterfalls of Haiti-this book provides a history of each site in conjunction with the photography.

Life is a balancing act. Finding the right balance is a constant challenge. Technologies continue to innovate the way food is grown, harvested, processed and consumed. A wide array of food products is now available to the urban masses. Given our busy lives, how many of us have taken the time to pause and ponder about what we are eating? Have we prospered from the large variety of ultra-processed foods that is easily available? Furthermore, we are constantly connected to our digital devices. How often do we pay attention to our physical activities and exercise regimes? Have we pondered about our fixation on instant gratification and miracle cures? Myrita2 is a space to pause, ponder and prosper about how to improve one’s health. This booklet is a collection of sixteen recipes, using primarily fresh fruits and vegetables, to boost your immune system. These fruits and vegetables are natural remedies that are commonly available at most of our grocery stores. The kitchen is potentially a fun and fantastic laboratory for you to cook up different combinations of fresh ingredients, for yourself and your loved ones. The emphasis is on rainbow diet and clean eating to boost your immunity system. Additionally, Myrita2 equips her readers with tips and toolkits on food hygiene, food journal, hydration, physical activity, etc. This handy guide is meant to help the self-directed earthling become a healthier version of yourself. As the sage Plato once extolled, “Knowledge is the food of the soul.” You are invited to take a seat, quieten your mind with a cup of freshly brewed tea, and dip into the pages of Myrita2. Enjoy the gift of food and find your pearls of wisdom. Afterall, health is wealth.

Health status and the experience of working in health care roles are both strongly shaped by gender and, although there have been attempts to incorporate ’gender awareness’ in both health and employment policies, the significance of gender in these areas continues to be marginalised within public debates and academic discourses. Taking a social constructionist perspective, Watts considers the ways in which gender impacts upon health in all its elements including access, technology, professionalisation, health promotion and health as an important sector of the labour market. She discusses gender as a developing and diversified category, exploring ideas about masculinity and the fluidity of gender boundaries in determining individual identity. Chapters that follow discuss men’s and women’s health; ideology of gender and health, specifically exploring different social norms and ideas about male and female health and the dominant ideological association between femaleness and caring; working for health with particular focus on the gendered interplay of caring and curing roles; technology and changes to gender, health and healthcare; health promotion as a gendered activity and, finally, the importance of introducing an intersectional approach beyond gender to articulate a deeper understanding of health in a postmodern context. The concluding chapter draws together these themes to underscore the importance of placing gender at the centre of health and health care delivery to fully take account of both the different life and health experiences of men and women and the gendered dimensions of working in health care.

The law holds up a mirror to society and reflects that society and its ongoing preoccupations. This book establishes legal interpretation as a mode of literary interpretation, contextualising the opinions and sociological background of literature within the context of the law of its period and examines the inherent role of the law in the construction of the narrative in the literature of the nineteenth century. From the approach to the operation of jurisprudence and legal application, to the prosecution of the poor, the criminological approach to moral panics and the use of the affirmative defence to mitigate women within society, this book explores the ways in which the authors of the period used the novel form as a way of challenging and critiquing the legal operating model of the world in which their characters found themselves; examining the way in which the authors of the period used the novel as a means of critiquing the nature of the role of the law within society, its impact upon the general public, and the reciprocity which exists between legal ideals and the society which manifests those ideals through thought and action. This is a useful text for students of nineteenth-century literature or the law.

WINNER of the 2020 Ernest Scott Prize for History Shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction Australian Book Review's Books of the Year 2019(read more here) In1970 homosexuality was illegal, God Savethe Queen was our national anthem and women pretended to be married to accessthe pill. By the end of the decade conscription was scrapped, tertiaryeducation was free, access to abortion had improved, the White Australia policywas abolished and a woman read the news on the ABC for the first time. TheSeventies was the decade that shaped modern Australia. It was the decade of'It's Time', stagflation and the Dismissal, a tumultuous period of economic andpolitical upheaval. But the Seventies was also the era when the personal becamepolitical, when we had a Royal Commission into Human Relationships and when socialmovements tore down the boundary between public and private life. Women wantedchildcare, equal pay, protection from violence and agency to shape their ownlives. In the process, the reforms they sought - and achieved, at least in part - reshaped Australia's culture and rewrote our expectations of government. Ina lively and engaging style, Michelle Arrow has written a new history of thistransformative decade; one that is more urgent, and more resonant, than ever.'At last, personal politics as national history. In lucid and nimble prose, Michelle Arrow demonstrates that - in the 1970s at least - it was about the relationships, stupid. A revelation.' - Clare Wright