Up to now, ritual has been under-utilised for studying human behaviour. This book narrows the gap in our understanding of the social causes and consequences of our actions by focusing on the ritualised behaviours that define much of our daily lives. Knottnerus breaks new ground by comprehensively describing structural ritualistic theory. He shows how structural reproduction has occurred throughout the world, how rituals can be strategically used and how power can influence rituals, and how the disruption and reconstitution of ritual is of crucial importance for human beings. This book shows that ritual provides a missing link in sociology and helps us better explain the extreme complexity of human action and social reality.

Aristotle said 'you are what you repeatedly do'. Most of us have no idea that what we repeatedly do creates our lives, we think our future is shaped by big events, the decisions we make, the thoughts we have but, this book will show you that it is your daily actions that are the key. Over the last few decades neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered that there is more power in 'I do' than 'I think'. However, if an action is repeated enough times it becomes habit but habits lack thought, consideration and presence. To effect long-lasting meaningful change our actions need to be filled with a sense of personal meaning and power – they need to be ritualized. Creating personal ritual in our lives allows us to bring the presence of the sacred into the everyday. The rituals in this book have been designed as symbolic acts providing a framework for anyone to use to create positive change in their lives. The 7 morning rituals are designed to help you 'wake with determination', the 7 afternoon rituals focus on 'living on purpose', and the 7 evening rituals are about 'retiring with satisfaction'.

This collection of articles reveals ritual to be a unique and powerful asset in healing trauma and broken relationships. Each contribution offers insights on how, in the face of uncertainty, threat and dislocation, human beings feel compelled to 'do something’, usually with or for others, to alleviate their anxiety, fears and sense of powerlessness. The editor and authors demonstrate how the imaginative processes at the heart of ritualmaking contribute to self- and group regulation by healing and mitigating the negative impact of trauma on individuals, collective groups, and even global systems. The authors are a group of remarkable scholars, researchers and practitioners who represent a diverse range of disciplines and subfields, including archaeology, Chinese studies, digital culture, ecological science, philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, the politics of memory and the preservation of cultural heritage in wartime, ritual anthropology, social research, physics, research on traumatic stress, and peace studies. Students and researchers across the social and behavioural sciences will find this volume useful.

The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation explores the historical and cultural structures that underpin the early modern Borgia family, their notoriety, and persistence and reinvention in the popular imagination. The book balances studies focusing on early modern observations of the Borgias and studies deconstructing later incarnations on the stage, on the page, on the street, and on the screen. It reveals how contemporary observers, later authors and artists, and generations of historians reinforced and perpetuated both rumor and reputation, ultimately contributing to the Borgia Black Legend and its representations. Focused on the deeds and posthumous reputations of Pope Alexander VI and his children, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, the volume charts the choices made by the family and contextualizes them amid contemporary expectations and reactions. Extending beyond their deaths, it also investigates how the Borgias became emblems of anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish criticism in the later early modern period and their residing reputation as the best and worst of the Renaissance. Exploring a spectrum of traditional and modern media, The Borgia Family contextualizes both Borgia deeds and their modern representations to analyze the family’s continuing history and meaning in the twenty-first century. It will be of great interest to researchers and students working on interdisciplinary aspects of the Renaissance and early modern Italy.

A collection of papers that examines a range of social psychological and group related phenomena, including original research articles, theoretical developments, and general reviews of select topics in the group processes literature.

This volume presents a comprehensive review of the current research in the field of primate thinking, learning and behavioural development. Recent theories of the ways in which primates perceive their world are integrated with the ways that they behave and communicate about each other and their environment. Many different species in both the wild and in captivity are discussed with coverage from the social development of neonates to the behaviour of adults. The common theme to the contributions is an attempt to understand how primates perceive, learn about and manipulate their social and physical environment.

In traditional China, a funeral and the accompanying death rituals represented a critical moment for the immediate family of the deceased to show their filial piety, a core value of the society. At the same time, death rituals were social occasions, and channels for the outward demonstration of belief in a religiously pluralistic society. During the Northern Song period, however, death rituals increasingly became an arena for political contention as attempts were made to transform these practices from a private matter into one subject to state control. Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China examines how political confrontations over the proper conduct of death rituals during Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) inaugurated a period of Confucian revivalism. Mihwa Choi interprets Northern Song court politics, family ritual practices, burial practices, and the popular imagination of the afterlife as sites of contest between groups of varying social status, political vision, and religious belief. She demonstrates that the oversight of ritual affairs by scholar-officials helped them gain the political upper hand they sought, and, more broadly, fostered a revival of Confucianism as the dominant value system of Chinese society in the period that followed.

Music Sociology explores 16 different genres to demonstrate that music everywhere reflects social values, organisational processes, meanings and individual identity. Presenting original ethnographic research, the contributors use descriptions of subcultures to explain the concepts of music sociology, including the rituals that link people to music, the past and each other. Music Sociology introduces the sociology of music to those who may not be familiar with it and provides a basic historical perspective on popular music in America and beyond.

Revolution in the Social Sciences centers on integrating knowledge from sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, political science and economics in order to confront increasing worldwide problems that threaten all of us. That integration of knowledge of human behavior is essential for understanding those problems, given their enormous complexity coupled with the highly specialized nature of the social sciences and their limited communication across specialized fields. It carries further the ideas developed by the Sociological Imagination Group in the seven books it has published since its founding in 2000 (www.sociological-imagination.org): Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel, Toward a Sociological Imagination, The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society, Understanding Terrorism, Armageddon or Evolution? Bureaucratic Culture and Escalating World Problems, and Saving Society. In addition to visible problems like war and terrorism with weapons of mass destruction that are becoming ever more threatening, there are relatively invisible problems. For example, there is an increasing gap between what people throughout the world want--including a decent standard of living and freedom from patterns of hatred like racism, sexism and ageism--and what they are in fact able to get. There is, then, an increasing aspirations-fulfillment gap, largely produced by the "revolution of rising expectations" over the past five centuries. Political leaders who attempt to confront problems can only make limited progress on them, largely because of the failure of social scientists to integrate their knowledge and thus yield the understanding of these complex problems that is required.

Asian American Identities and Practices: Folkloric Expressions in Everyday Life probes the intersection, interplay, and interconnection of Asian and Asian American folklore and folklife in globally fluid and culturally creative landscapes among Asian American communities and subjects. Asian American folklore, as a way of life and practice, has emerged and continues to emerge as Asian Americans lay claim and take root in the American mosaic. As such, the contributors in this volume all show how the Asian American historical experiences and continued international migration inform the production of new folkloric practices, subjectivities, and ideologies, which in turn strengthen specific Asian American ways of life while normalizing folklore that are squarely produced in Asian America. This collectionillustrates that Asian American folklore and folklife is interwoven with social relationships, the creation of various types of ethnic, cultural, and national identities, and adaptive strategies within the particular historical periods, communities, and shifting boundaries and demographics of Asian America. The global context of Asian American folklore and folklife, especially in the racially charged post-9/11 context, bespeaks how Asians, past and present, maneuver the cultural spaces of their host society and old traditions to create new sites and new opportunities for cultural folkloric production and expression in everyday life.