Winner of The 2008 Jane Grigson Award, issued by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). Winner of the 2008 Cordon d' Or Culinary Literature - History Culinary Academy Award. This is the story of the bean, the staple food cultivated by humans for over 10,000 years. From the lentil to the soybean, every civilization on the planet has cultivated its own species of bean. The humble bean has always attracted attention - from Pythagoras' notion that the bean hosted a human soul to St. Jerome's indictment against bean-eating in convents (because they tickle the genitals), to current research into the deadly toxins contained in the most commonly eaten beans. Over time, the bean has been both scorned as poor man's meat and praised as health-giving, even patriotic. Attitudes to this most basic of foodstuffs have always revealed a great deal about a society. Beans: A History takes the reader on a fascinating journey across cuisines and cultures.

Film emerged in pre-Revolutionary Russia to become the 'most important of all arts' for the new Bolshevik regime and its propaganda machine. The 1920s saw a flowering of film experimentation, notably with the work of Eisenstein, and a huge growth in the audience for film, which continued into the 1930s with the rise of musicals. The films of the Second World War and Cold War periods reflected a return to political concerns in their representation of the 'enemy'. The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of art-house films. With glasnost came the collapse of the state-run film industry and an explosion in the cinematic treatment of previously taboo topics. In the new Russia, cinema has become genuinely independent, as a commercial as well as an artistic medium.

A History of Russian Cinema is the first complete history from the beginning of film to the present day and presents an engaging narrative of both the industry and its key films in the context of Russia's social and political history.

Clothes take the ordinary human body and fashion it into something remarkable. Born to the same anatomical legacy, each generation has used garments to shape itself in the image of its own particular desires.

Taking different body parts in turn, The Anatomy of Fashion invites us to view ourselves as we have been in the past. Arguing that analysis needs to aspire to the proliferation and playfulness of fashion itself, the chapters both explore a different aesthetic and examine its wider, and often surprising, implications. In countless different ways, fashion is caught up in the larger picture of its chronological moment. Whether in the mechanisms of production, the politics of consumption, the construction of sexuality or gender, or the formation and reformation of manners and morals, fashion is there.

In its provocative conclusion The Anatomy of Fashion turns its attention to dress practices today. Reassembling the anatomical parts, the text places the contemporary body in the historical view and reveals the strangeness that lies at the heart of our own normality.

Roland Barthes was one of the most widely influential thinkers of the 20th Century and his immensely popular and readable writings have covered topics ranging from wrestling to photography. The semiotic power of fashion and clothing were of perennial interest to Barthes and The Language of Fashion - now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series - collects some of his most important writings on these topics. Barthes' essays here range from the history of clothing to the cultural importance of Coco Chanel, from Hippy style in Morocco to the figure of the dandy, from colour in fashion to the power of jewellery. Barthes' acute analysis and constant questioning make this book an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the cultural power of fashion.

For at least two centuries, fashion and art have maintained a competitive love-hate relationship. Both fashion and art construct imaginary worlds, and use a language of style to invigorate beliefs, perceptions and ideas.

Until now the crossovers of fashion and art have received only scattered treatment and suffered from a dearth of theorization. As an attempt to theorize the area, this collection of new and updated essays is the most well-rounded and authoritative to date. Some of the world's foremost scholars in the field are assembled here to explore the art-fashion nexus in numerous ways: from aesthetics and performance to masquerade and media.

Original and inspiring, this book will not only secure 'art-fashion' as a discrete area of study, but also suggest new critical pathways for exploring their continuing cross-pollination. Fashion and Art is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, art history and theory, cultural studies and related fields.

When, how and why do clothes become fashion? Fashion is more than mere clothing. It is a moment of invention, a distillation of desire, a reflection of a zeitgeist. It is also a business relying on an intricate network of manufacture, marketing and retail. Fashion is both medium and message but it does not explain itself. It requires language and images for its global mediation. It develops from the prescience of the designer and is dependent on acceptance by observers and wearers alike. When Clothes Become Fashion explores the structures and strategies which underlie fashion innovation, how fashion is perceived and the point at which clothing is accepted or rejected as fashion. The book provides a clear theoretical framework for understanding the world of fashion - its aesthetic premises, plurality of styles, performative impulses, social qualities and economic conditions.

Prousts famous madeleine captures the power of food to evoke some of our deepest memories. Why does food hold such power? What does the growing commodification and globalization of food mean for our capacity to store the past in our meals in the smell of olive oil or the taste of a fresh-cut fig?

This book offers a theoretical account of the interrelationship of culture, food and memory. Sutton challenges and expands anthropologys current focus on issues of embodiment, memory and material culture, especially in relation to transnational migration and the flow of culture across borders and boundaries. The Greek island of Kalymnos in the eastern Aegean, where Islanders claim to remember meals long past -- both humble and spectacular provides the main setting for these issues, as well as comparative materials drawn from England and the United States. Despite the growing interest in anthropological accounts of food and in the cultural construction of memory, the intersection of food with memory has not been accorded sustained examination. Cultural practices of feasting and fasting, global flows of food as both gifts and commodities, the rise of processed food and the relationship of orally transmitted recipes to the vast market in speciality cookbooks tie traditional anthropological mainstays such as ritual, exchange and death to more current concerns with structure and history, cognition and the anthropology of the senses. Arguing for the crucial role of a simultaneous consideration of food and memory, this book significantly advances our understanding of cultural processes and reformulates current theoretical preoccupations.

Skateboarders are an increasingly common feature of the urban environment - recent estimates total 40 million world-wide. We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets. This book is the first detailed study of the urban phenomenon of skateboarding. It looks at skateboarding history from the surf-beaches of California in the 1950s, through the purpose-built skateparks of the 1970s, to the street-skating of the present day and shows how skateboarders experience and understand the city through their sport. Dismissive of authority and convention, skateboarders suggest that the city is not just a place for working and shopping but a true pleasure-ground, a place where the human body, emotions and energy can be expressed to the full.

The huge skateboarding subculture that revolves around graphically-designed clothes and boards, music, slang and moves provides a rich resource for exploring issues of gender, race, class, sexuality and the family. As the author demonstrates, street-style skateboarding, especially characteristic of recent decades, conducts a performative critique of architecture, the city and capitalism. Anyone interested in the history and sociology of sport, urban geography or architecture will find this book riveting.

This is the first in-depth study of the complete work of Heinrich Bll, one of the best known writers of postwar Germany. Bll became passionately invloved in the political upheavals and debates of his time, and all the major issues are reflected in his writings. His works were invariably provocative and were critically received in both academic and non-academic circles. Abroad he had the solid reputation of the good German who unambiguously condemned fascism and the less appealing features of the land of the Economic Miracle. In 1972 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first German to be so honoured since Thomas Mann in 1929, and his books sell by the millions. This study not only places Bll's writings in the context of contemporary political, social and literary developments but, at the same time, can be read as a lively history of the federal Republic.

Fashion has become a fertile field of study for academics across disciplines, now that the rules, once tightly fixed, have been deconstructed. This volume brings together academics from various disciplines - philosophy, sociology, medicine, anthropology, psychology and psychiatry - to examine fashion's complex relationship with post-industrial societies. Herein the authors address, from the standpoint of their respective disciplines, what crucial functions fashion fulfils in the modern world, especially as it relates to the construction and deconstruction of the self.

This volume is the result of a conference held by the Social Trends Institute at which the authors presented original papers. The Social Trends Institute is a non-profit research centre that offers institutional and financial support to academics in all fields who research and explore emerging social trends and their effects on human communities. The Institute focuses its research on four main subject areas: family, bioethics, culture and lifestyles, and corporate governance.

Through a highly original and detailed analysis of the memoirs, interviews and other life writings of Poiret, Dior and Schiaparelli, this book explores changing notions of femininity in the early decades of the 20th century, when the democratization of fashion began.

Examining idea of modernity, eternity and the ephemeral in the writings of these haute couturiers, the book reflects on fashion's ambivalent approach to women, which both celebrated and vilified them, presenting them as both ultra modern style leaders and irrational creatures stuck in the past.

This fascinating text is key reading for scholars and students of fashion, gender studies, cultural studies and history.

Surviving Hitler and Mussolini examines how far everyday life was possible in a situation of total war and brutal occupation. Its theme is the social experience of occupation in German- and Italian-occupied Europe, and in particular the strategies ordinary people developed in order to survive. Survival included meeting the challenges of shortage and hunger, of having to work for the enemy, of women entering into intimate relations with soldiers, of the preservation of culture in a fascist universe, of whether and how to resist, and the reaction of local communities to measures of reprisal taken in response to resistance. What emerges is that ordinary people were less heroes, villains or victims than inventive and resourceful individuals able to maintain courage and dignity despite the conditions they faced.The book adopts a comparative approach from Denmark and the Netherlands to Poland and Greece, and offers a fresh perspective on the Second World War.

As a universal game, association football has been particularly suited to the transfer of labour forces. It does not require the use of a specific national language, a recognized diploma or acquired qualification, and the rules are standardized across the globe. Thus the international football market could be considered an ideal example of a transnational and multicultural employment sector. Role models throughout the history of professional football have not necessarily come from the town, nation, racial group or religious denomination of the majority of supporters, as is seen in the cases of Maradona in Naples, the German Bert Trautmann after the Second World War, and more recently the Frenchman Eric Cantona in Manchester, the Cameroonese Milla in France, and the Argentinian Di Stefano in Madrid. Football provides a particularly revealing lens through which to examine changes in national styles and stereotypes as they have been (and still are) reflected in the search for identities in sporting heroes.In this book, the authors consider the movement of football labour from the late nineteenth-century to the present day within the framework of international migration as a whole. Emphasis is given to the initial role of the British in the early twentieth century and the impact of the earliest South American and Yugoslav football 'wanderers'. The position of African footballers in the postwar period and the failure of America's national league in the 1970s are also discussed, along with the international market for coaches and managers, the development of national playing styles and the immediate consequences and future implications of the Bosman ruling.

The way a society deals with hair speaks volumes about its structures, its wealth, and its values. How is hair arranged? Is it left long or cut short? How often is it washed? Do men and women treat their hair differently and what does this tell us about gender? This stimulating book contains articles written by the Paris hairstylist Emile Long between December 1910 and December 1920 for an English trade journal. Long's purpose in writing was to keep English coiffeurs informed about the goings-on in the world of fashion and hairdressing in France, and especially in Paris. In doing so he has provided us with a personal cultural history of the world's most fashionable city in a period that stretches from the end of the Belle Epoque, through the First World War, and into the opening year of the Roaring Twenties. His investigation of hairstyles and fashion inevitably leads him to a fascinating discussion of important historical issues: the 'true' nature of Woman; the genesis and democratization of fashion; and popular attitudes towards hygiene. With his engaging literary style Long invites us to think about consumer habits and technology, notions of fashion and cleanliness, and changing ideals of femininity and the social order.Students and scholars of history, fashion and French society will enjoy these rich and revealing accounts of what hair means to identity and culture.

Increasingly, women and minorities are entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. The spaces they come to occupy are not empty or neutral, but are imbued with history and meaning. This groundbreaking book interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not.Drawing on case studies from within the nation state, including Westminster and Whitehall, the art world, academia and everyday life, this book uncovers the hidden processes that undermine female and/or racialized bodies in spaces marked by masculinity and whiteness. How are positions of authority racialized and gendered? How do people manage their femininity and/or blackness while in a predominantly white male context? How do spaces become naturalized or normalized, and what does it mean when they are disrupted?Answering these questions and many more, this book is the first to examine the meaning of diversity in organizations in its absolute complexity. It argues that a thorough engagement with difference requires a rigorous investigation of how institutional cultures become normative. It is only when we see and name this invisible central point of reference, which is so often taken for granted, that we can we truly unsettle long established links. Uniting social, cultural and political theory, and engaging with a range of substantive material from a variety of institutions, this book is a timely contribution to wide-reaching debates on race, gender and space.

Institutionalized as a fascist game in Mussolinis Italy, football was exploited domestically in an attempt to develop a sense of Italian identity and internationally as a diplomatic tool to improve Italys standing in the global arena. The 1930s were the zenith of achievement for Italian football. Italy hosted and won the 1934 World Cup tournament and retained the trophy in 1938 in France. In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Italy won the soccer tournament with a team of university students, affirming the nations international football supremacy. At club level, calcio was reorganized into a single, national league in 1929namely, Serie Aafter which the first Italian club teams emerged to dominate European competition and threaten previous British notions of supremacy.In this time, Italian Fascism fully exploited the opportunities football provided to shape public opinion, penetrate daily life, and reinforce conformity. By politicizing the game, Fascism also sought to enhance the regimes international prestige and inculcate nationalist values. The author argues that the regimes attempt to use sport to formulate identity actually forced it to recognize existing tensions within society, thereby paradoxically permitting the existence of diversity and individuality.The book serves as a cultural history of Fascism in Italy viewed through the lens of football.

Childhood and families had a ubiquitous and central presence in the ancient world but one which is often hidden from us. Underlying our understanding of childhood and the family in Antiquity are the key thinkers and writers of the period. Their ideas on children, growing up, and the stages of life have shaped thinking on these subjects right up to the present day.

Focusing on the cultures of the Mediterranean from 800 BCE to 800 CE, A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in Antiquity covers the rise of democratic Athens, the Hellenistic World and the evolution and transformation of the Roman Empire.

A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in Antiquity presents essays on family relations, community, economy, geography and environment, education, life cycle, the state, faith and religion, health and science and world contexts.

Design History has become a complex and wide-ranging discipline. It now examines artefacts from conception to development, production, mediation, and consumption. Over the last few decades, the discipline has developed a diverse range of theories and methodologies for the analysis of objects. Design History presents the most comprehensive overview and guide to these developments.

The book first traces the development of the discipline, explaining how it draws from Art History, Industrial Design, Cultural History and Material Culture Studies. The core of the book then analyses the seminal methodologies used in Design History today. The final section highlights the key issues concerning knowledge and meaning in Design. Throughout, the aim is to present a concise and accessible introduction to this complex field.

A map to the intellectual landscape of Design History, the book will be an invaluable guide for students and a very useful reference for scholars.

This book examines the clothing worn by African Americans in the southern United States during the thirty years before the American Civil War. Drawing on a wide range of sources, most notably oral narratives recorded in the 1930s, this rich account shows that African Americans demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the role clothing played in demarcating age, sex, status, work, recreation, as well as special secular and sacred events. Testimonies offer proof of African Americans' vast technical skills in producing cloth and clothing, which served both as a fundamental reflection of the peoples' Afrocentric craftsmanship and aesthetic sensibilities, and as a reaction to their particular place in American society. Previous work on clothing in this period has tended to focus on white viewpoints, and as a consequence the dress worn by the enslaved has generally been seen as a static standard imposed by white overlords. This excellent study departs from conventional interpretations to show that the clothing of the enslaved changed over time, served multiple functions and represented customs and attitudes which evolved distinctly from within African American communities. In short, it represents a vital contribution to African American studies, as well as to dress and textile history, and cultural and folklore studies.

This is the first book in English to deal comprehensively with German fashion from World War I through to the end of the Third Reich. It explores the failed attempt by the Nazi state to construct a female image that would mirror official gender policies, inculcate feelings of national pride, promote a German victory on the fashion runways of Europe and support a Nazi-controlled European fashion industry. Not only was fashion one of the countrys largest industries throughout the interwar period, but German women ranked among the most elegantly dressed in all of Europe. While exploding the cultural stereotype of the German woman as either a Brunhilde in uniform or a chubby farmers wife, the author reveals the often heated debates surrounding the issue of female image and clothing, as well as the ambiguous and contradictory relationship between official Nazi propaganda and the reality of womens daily lives during this crucial period in German history. Because Hitler never took a firm public stance on fashion, an investigation of fashion policy reveals ambivalent posturing, competing factions and conflicting laws in what was clearly not a monolithic National Socialist state. Drawing on previously neglected primary sources, Guenther unearths new material to detail the inner workings of a government-supported fashion institute and an organization established to help aryanize the German fashion world.How did the few with power maintain style and elegance? How did the majority experience the increased standardization of clothing characteristic of the Nazi years? How did women deal with the severe clothing restrictions brought about by Nazi policies and the exigencies of war? These questions and many others, including the role of anti-Semitism, aryanization and the hypocrisy of Nazi policies, are all thoroughly examined in this pathbreaking book.