From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny.

In this book, Catherine Bell off...

The Silk Road was the current name for a complex of ancient trade routes linking East Asia with Central Asia, South Asia, and the Mediterranean world. This network of exchange emerged along the borders between agricultural China and the steppe nomads during the Han Dynasty (206BCE-220CE), in consequence of the inter-dependence and the conflicts of these two distinctive societies. In their quest for horses, fragrances, and spices, gems, glassware, and other exotics from the lands to their west...

Winner of the James Coleman Award for Best Book from the Rationality and Society section of the American Sociological Society Winner of the Outstanding Recent Contribution from the Social Psychology section of the American Sociological Association. Winner of the Best Publication Award from the Mental Health section of the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, PROSE Book Award, Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, from the Association of American Publishers. When people are faci...

Designed for advanced undergraduate or first-year graduate courses in semiconductor or microelectronic fabrication, Fabrication Engineering at the Micro- and Nanoscale, Fourth Edition, covers the entire basic unit processes used to fabricate integrated circuits and other devices.

Competition is responsible for much of the prosperity around us. Competitive markets deliver lower prices, better quality, abundance of choice, and increased innovation. But while competition benefits the consumers, it can prove challenging to producers and sellers, who need to constantly improve to stay in business. As a result, sellers may sometimes look for ways to dampen the competitive process.

Our antitrust and competition laws are designed to address these risks and safeguard consumer ...

The study of Islamic philosophy has entered a new and exciting phase in the last few years. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. Most twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy has focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth.

It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in thefield that, unlike other refer...

This third edition of Human Rights: Between Idealism and Realism presents human rights in action, focusing on their effectiveness as legal tools designed to benefit human beings. By combining conceptual analysis with an emphasis on procedures and mechanisms of implementation, this volume provides a multidimensional overview of human rights. After examining briefly the history of human rights, the author analyses the intellectual framework that forms thebasis of their legitimacy.

In particular...

Make discussion work easy for students with Bookworms Club. These collections of graded short stories have been specially selected for Reading Circles - small groups of students who meet to talk about stories. With role sheets to help students prepare for the discussions, and stimulating graded stories, Bookworms Club provides the magic formula for getting students to talk in English.

Covering both trade and international finance, this innovative text provides a thoroughly up-do-date and comprehensive treatment of each area. Throughout, the theory is illustrated with empirical evidence and an abundance of relevant case studies. It includes an online study guide.

Task-based teaching has created enormous interest among teachers in recent years. But how does the idea of designing tasks (e.g. discussions, problems, games) that encourage learners to use real language work in practice? This book explains the basic principles behind task-based learning and teaching and gives practical examples of how to make it work in different teaching situations.