Archives de catégorie : Anthropology/Sociology

WOMEN WITHOUT KIDS de Ruby Warrington

What is “woman” if not “mother”? Anything she wants to be.

WOMEN WITHOUT KIDS:
The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood
by Ruby Warrington
Publisher, March 2023
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Foregoing motherhood has traditionally marked a woman as “other.” With no official place setting for her in our society, she has hovered on the sidelines: the quirky girl, the neurotic career obsessive, the “eccentric” aunt. Instead of continuing to paint women without kids as sad, self-obsessed, or somehow dysfunctional, what if we saw them as boldly forging a first-in-a-civilization vision for a fully autonomous womankind? Or as journalist and thought leader Ruby Warrington asks, What if being a woman without kids were in fact its own kind of legacy?
Taking in themes from intergenerational healing to feminism to environmentalism, this personal look and anthropological dig into a stubbornly taboo topic is a timely and brave reframing of what it means not to be a mom. Our experiences and discourse around non-motherhood are central to women’s ongoing fight for gender equality. And whether we are childless by design or circumstance, we can live without regret, shame, or compromise.
Bold and tenderhearted, WOMEN WITHOUT KIDS seeks first and foremost to help valorize a path that is the natural consequence of women having more say about the choices we make and how our lives play out. Within this, it unites the unsung sisterhood of non-mothers―no longer pariahs or misfits, but as a vital part of our evolution and collective healing as women, as humans, and as a global family.

Ruby Warrington is a British-born author, editor, and publishing consultant. Recognized as a true thought leader in the wellness space, Ruby has the unique ability to identify issues that are destined to become part of the cultural narrative. Her previous books include Material Girl, Mystical World; Sober Curious; and The Sober Curious Reset.

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THE LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH d’Eliot Stein

Through a collection of deeply researched and reported narratives that focus on ten unsung, inspiring individuals who are upholding ancient rites and practices, THE LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH is a celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance, and a love letter to the people, places and practices that make our world so wondrous.

THE LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH:
Humanity’s Rarest Cultural Wonders & the Guardians Keeping them Alive
by Eliot Stein
‎ St. Martin’s Press, 2024
(via Harvey Klinger)

For the past four years before Covid hit, Eliot Stein has been traveling all around the planet profiling remarkable people who are producing or preserving a distinct cultural wonder that exists nowhere else for a column he created for BBC Travel called Custom Made. In Italy, Eliot learned the secrets of the world’s rarest pasta from one of only three women alive who knows how to make it. In Taiwan, he shadowed the island’s last film poster painter, a man who’s now partially blind but still hangs his giant brushstroke canvases on the theater marquee. In Sardinia, Eliot meets a 24th generation diver who is the only person left on Earth who still knows how to harvest and embroider an incredibly rare fiber known as sea silk, into elaborate patterns that glisten like gold.
THE LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH takes the spirit of the award-winning Custom Made column and expands it. It’s a collection of deeply researched and reported narratives that focus on ten unsung, inspiring individuals who are upholding ancient rites and practices that are uniquely rooted in a place’s history and character, and are also on the edge of extinction. THE LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH explores the cultural and emotional impact of what it means when the unique traditions and customs that we’ve treasured for generations fade away. Above all, it’s a celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance, and a love letter to the people, places and practices that make our world so wondrous.
With the thoughtful contemplation and detail of Pico Iyer, and the empathy and reverie Brandon Stanton conveys for his subjects, The Last People on Earth casts a broad geographic and thematic net to tell a larger story about who we are, how customs shape culture, and what the future may have in store for us.

Eliot Stein is an award-winning journalist, deputy editor at BBC Travel, and the creator of the Custom Made column, consistently one of BBC Travel’s top-performing series, with views in the millions. In addition, Eliot’s writing has been published in Best Travel Writing books anthology (Travelers Tales, 2008), and has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, The Guardian, WIRED, Conde Nast Traveler, CNN, The Independent, USA Today, Vice, and elsewhere. His stories have been translated into 27 languages.

THE RISE OF THE NEW PURITANS de Noah Rothman

Commentary editor Noah Rothman takes aim at the “woke left,” comparing them to stern, joyless Puritans who seek to make every daily choice a matter of life or death and break society down into the saintly or sinful.

THE RISE OF THE NEW PURITANS:
Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun
by Noah Rothman
Broadside Books/HarperCollins, July 2022

In Noah Rothman’s view, the Left used to be the party of the hippies and the free spirits. Now it’s home to woke scolds and humorless idealogues. The New Puritans can judge a person’s moral character by their clothes, Netflix queue, fast food favorites, the sports they watch, and the company they keep. No choice is neutral, no sphere is private.
Not since the Puritans has a political movement wanted so much power over your thoughts, hobbies, and preferences every minute of your day. In the process, they are sucking the joy out of life.
In THE RISE OF THE NEW PURITANS, Noah Rothman explains how, in pursuit of a better world, progressives are ruining the very things which make life worth living. They’ve created a society full of verbal trip wires and digital witch hunts. Football? Too violent. Fusion food? Appropriation. The nuclear family? Oppressive.
Witty, deeply researched, and thorough, THE RISE OF THE NEW PURITANS encourages us to spurn a movement whose primary goal has become limiting happiness. It uncovers the historical roots of the left’s war on fun and reminds us of the freedom and personal fulfillment at the heart of the American experiment.

Noah Rothman is the associate editor of Commentary Magazine, author of Unjust, and an MSNBC/NBC News contributor.

ON BELONGING de Kim Samuel

In an age of social isolation, what does it mean to belong?

ON BELONGING:
Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation
by Kim Samuel
‎ Abrams Press, September 2022

Humanity is at an inflection point. Stress, disconnection, and increasing environmental degradation have people yearning for more than just material progress, personal freedom, or political stability. We are searching for deeper connection. We are longing to belong.
ON BELONGING is an exploration of the crisis of social isolation and of the fundamental human need to belong. It considers belonging across four core dimensions: in our relationships with other people, in our rootedness in nature, in our ability to influence political and economic decision-making, and in our finding of meaning and purpose in our lives, with lessons on how to create communities centered on human connection.
A trailblazing advocate and thought leader on questions of social connectedness, Kim Samuel introduces readers to leaders around the world who are doing the work to cultivate belonging. Whether through sports, medicine, music, business, culture, or advocacy, the people and programs in this book offer us meaningful lessons on building a world where we all feel at home.

“Kim Samuel dives deeply into one of the most complex issues of twenty-first-century human existence, the results of which can be discovered in this compelling book. ON BELONGING draws narratives from profound life experiences, timeless literature, and cutting-edge academic research. The key to finding potential solutions to so many of the social, ecological, economic, and political challenges we face will be revealed within these pages. Find inspiration and even hope right here!”―Annie Lennox, singer-songwriter and global feminist activist

Kim Samuel is an activist, educator, and movement builder. She is the founder of the Samuel Centre for Social Connected-ness and an academic lecturer at institu-tions including Oxford, Harvard, and McGill Universities. Samuel was recently named the first-ever Fulbright Canada ambassador for diversity and social connectedness. She lives in Toronto.

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WARUM ES SO SCHWER IST, EIN GUTER MENSCH ZU SEIN d’Armin Falk

Why we want to do the right thing, but do the wrong thing instead – and how to become a better person.

WARUM ES SO SCHWER IST, EIN GUTER MENSCH ZU SEIN
(Why It Is So Hard to Be Good)
by Armin Falk
Siedler Verlag, May 2022

Would you save a life for 100 euros? The answer has to be yes – doesn’t everyone want to do the right thing? But Armin Falk, Germany’s leading behavioural economist, shows that we often do bad things despite wanting to be good, and are far from being as good as we like to think.
Why is it that we don’t do the right thing day in and day out: help others, give to those in need, protect our climate or care for the well-being of animals? Using many concrete examples and the insights he has gained from years of research, the Leibniz Prize-winner reveals under what circumstances people are likely to act morally – or immorally – and the role that personality, gender, education and culture play. Once we have understood this, we’ll find it easier to change – not only ourselves, but the very fabric of our economy and society.

Armin Falk, born in 1968, is the director of the Institute for Behavioural Economics and Inequality (BRIQ) and of the Laboratory for Experimental Economic Research, as well as Professor of economics at the University of Bonn. He is one of the world’s most highly regarded economic scientists. His work has won him the 2009 Leibniz Prize (the ‘German Nobel’) and a 2013 Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, the world’s highest prize for economists.