There is no doubt that we live in exciting times: Ours is the age of many ‘silent revolutions’ triggered by startups and research labs of big IT companies; revolutions that quietly and profoundly alter the world we live in. Another ten or five years, and self-tracking will be as normal and inevitable as having a Facebook account or a mobile phone. Our bodies, hooked to wearable devices sitt…
Sherborne Old Castle was built in Dorset in about 1122–35. The fortified palace was one of several major building projects undertaken by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury. Although Sherborne Old Castle was altered over the next four centuries, most of its original structural elements were retained until the buildings were slighted during the English Civil War. This report describes and analyses the …
This is a comprehensive study of the archaeological archives and artefact collections of Glastonbury Abbey, together with a new geophysical survey of the site. It analyses thirty-six seasons of archaeological excavation directed by such iconic figures as Sir William St John Hope, Sir Charles Peers, Sir Alfred Clapham and Dr Courtenay Arthur Ralegh Radford, and reveals new insights into the abbe…
"The authors of the present volume, Myth, Materiality, and Lived Religion, focus on the material dimension of Old Norse mythology and the role played by myths in everyday life. More broadly expressed, the collection looks at the social, ceremonial and material contexts of myths. This topic has been underexplored in previous research on Old Norse myths, despite its important theoretical implicat…
The multifarious and sometimes contested concept of “shamanism” has aroused intense popular and scholarly interest since its initial coinage by the Russian scholar V. M. Mikhailovsky in the late 19th century. In this book, three leading scholars, representing different branches of the humanities, dwell on the current status of shamanic practices and conceptions of the soul, both as ‘etic…
Monsoon Assemblages is a research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 697873). Monsoon [+ other] Airs is the first of three publications by Monsoon Assemblages arising from symposia held at the University of Westminster (2017-2019). These form part of its agenda to foster interdisc…
This volume is about India’s deep and complex relationship with its chosen form of government. It is an interdisciplinary book with approaches drawn from history, anthropology, sociology, political science and social geography. We believe this volume provides new perspectives on how to approach and analyse the complexity of India’s democracy. The book’s unfortunate publishing history also…
This interdisciplinary book contains 22 essays and interventions on rest and restlessness, silence and noise, relaxation and work. It draws together approaches from artists, literary scholars, psychologists, activists, historians, geographers and sociologists who challenge assumptions about how rest operates across mind, bodies, and practices. Rest’s presence or absence affects everyone. Neve…
In this chapter, I explore the regulation of alternative and traditional medicine, in order to reflect on how particular temporalities shape, and are shaped by, the interface between law and medicine. This chapter makes two key points: first, it argues that both biomedicine and law have relied on a particular sense of ‘modernity’ as a linear temporal process; in turn, this has been key in d…