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Increasing globalization in the form of greater international trade and immigration has both costs and benefits. Market institutions and secure private property rights are conducive to higher economic growth, but some point out that higher growth must be weighed against alleged social instability and, perhaps, cultural degeneration. However, globalization may increase stability and cultural output. Polling data suggest that anti. trade, anti-migration views pose a political challenge to economic and cultural exchange. People are skeptical of the rapidity of change coming with globalization, which leads to backlashes that slow the process. Negative effects of globalization include increases in prostitution, for example, and perceived alienation from the global culture. There are tensions between economic change and cultural vibrancy. Nonetheless, greater international integration and accompanying economic growth increase cultural diversity.

This paper addresses how the notion of 'culture' has been understood and employed by both epidemiologists and anthropologists with respect to the literature on HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. It examines the shift towards non-biomedical understandings of the epidemic. The concept of 'culture' has been 'bandied about' [Schoepf, B.G. (2004). AIDS, history and struggles over meaning. In E. Kalipeni, S. Craddock, J.R. Oppong, & J. Ghosh (Eds.), HIVand AIDS in Africa: Beyond epidemiology. Oxford: Blackwell.], and yet no authors in the literature reviewed here attempt a more systematic account of the 'bandying about' itself. This paper thus attempts to address and close this gap. For biomedical researchers and epidemiologists, broadly speaking, 'culture' appears to compromise intervention, whilst for medical anthropologists, 'culture' is often seen as having the potential to assist intervention. 'Culture' comes to be multifaceted and laden with varying assumptions, which range from 'culture' being bounded and timeless, to 'culture' being linked to macroprocesses, historically shaped, and contested. In turn, 'culture' has variously been understood as both the cause of, and solution to, the epidemic. It is also understood as having structured local interpretations of, and responses to, the epidemic. At the same time as noting the apparent dichotomy between the biomedical and social approaches, however, the models may inadvertently share certain assumptions about 'culture' as an essentializing signifier of difference. To this extent HIV/AIDS research could be improved by incorporating wider anthropological debates about the problems of the 'culture' concept. Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa; HIV/AIDS; Intervention; Culture; Epidemiology; Anthropology

Published in 1955, Personal Influence is a study of how middle America made political and consumer decisions in small primary groups and how ordinary people were both influenced and influencing. The Vietnam War challenged the paradigm as a new generation of scholars turned to larger units--state and society--and the power the media might have in reinforcing class structure. Part II of this article examines the application of the paradigm in voting studies from Waiter Lippmann as the prototypical cosmopolitan to the locals of Decatur. The conclusion raises questions about the future based on globalization and the decline of the nation-state. Drawing on Dayan and Katz's work in studying televised events, this article shares their perspective based on aesthetics, which would give more attention to culture. Keywords: decision making; primary groups; nation-state; globalization; culture

A visit to the Liberty Bell has an unexpectedly penetrating effect on the author. He recasts a planned talk on the crisis of British working-class culture into a wider meditation, shaped by the metaphor of the bell, on the role of culture in popular struggles from below. The bell calls up the centrality of human labor in popular struggle and experience, from that embedded in the physical making of the bell to all the symbolic and communicative labors entailed in the grassroots cultural production of the historical meanings now condensed into it. In the past, these labors have helped to produce trade unions, abolitionist political forces and organizations, and the civil and women's rights movements. But devastating economic and social changes seem to have fractured the everyday cultural forms of today, made them invisible, and unwound their links with political organization: the bell is cracked anew. But human labors, physical and cultural, continue even in 'new times.' Ethnographic social science must recognize, record, and dignify their many forms, seeking, where possible, to make visibility a means to self-direction and repair. Keywords: culture; cultural production; working-class culture; cultural commodity; logic of practice; ethnography and cultural therapy

The 1960s in America didn't begin as 'The Sixties.' Before the years of upheaval and angry division, the decade brought Americans an interlude of civility and earnest aspiration. Anything was [...]

The authors put forth the idea that explains how cooperative behaviors are formed and how they might change over time. For this study, Africans were studied to develop this economic theory.

Key Words social movements, frame, collective action, reality construction, culture * Abstract The recent proliferation of scholarship on collective action frames and framing processes in relation to social movements indicates [...]

THE SOURCE: 'The Possibility of Impossible Cultures' by Marc D. Hauser, in Nature, July 9, 2009. A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CAN sound so unintelligible that it's hard to believe what linguists [...]