The modern world around us is more mysterious than we think. This book looks beneath the surface of modern material culture to ask how the very stuff of our world has shaped our societies, and how and why it is that we have made the material culture that surrounds us. Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture offers a new approach to the study of contemporary objects, from academics prominent in disciplines ranging from archaeology to philosophy and psychology. All have diverse perspectives on what material culture is, but all are equally concerned with how the very material nature of artefacts comes to form human life. The questions they address include: * why did the electric car fail? * why do Berliners have such strange door keys? * should the Isle of Wight pop festival be preserved? * why do autistic children have problems with objects? * could aliens tell a snail shell from a waste paper basket? * why did Victorian England make so much of death and burial? Taken together, the eight contributions in this book lead the reader to a new understanding of the relationship between people and their material world. They will be of great interest to everyone studying modern material culture. Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, George Nash, Beth Preston, Michael Brian Schiffer, A.J. Schofield, Emma Williams

From the first vistas provided by flight in balloons in the eighteenth century to the most recent sensing operations performed by military drones, the history of aerial imagery has marked the transformation of how people perceived their world, better understood their past, and imagined their future. In Aerial Aftermaths Caren Kaplan traces this cultural history, showing how aerial views operate as a form of world-making tied to the times and places of war. Kaplan’s investigation of the aerial arts of war—painting, photography, and digital imaging—range from England's surveys of Scotland following the defeat of the 1746 Jacobite rebellion and early twentieth-century photographic mapping of Iraq to images taken in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Throughout, Kaplan foregrounds aerial imagery's importance to modern visual culture and its ability to enforce colonial power, demonstrating both the destructive force and the potential for political connection that come with viewing from above.

We are now acutely aware, as if all of the sudden, that data matters enormously to how we live. How did information come to be so integral to what we can do? How did we become people who effortlessly present our lives in social media profiles and who are meticulously recorded in state surveillance dossiers and online marketing databases? What is the story behind data coming to matter so much to who we are?
In How We Became Our Data, Colin Koopman excavates early moments of our rapidly accelerating data-tracking technologies and their consequences for how we think of and express our selfhood today. Koopman explores the emergence of mass-scale record keeping systems like birth certificates and social security numbers, as well as new data techniques for categorizing personality traits, measuring intelligence, and even racializing subjects. This all culminates in what Koopman calls the “informational person” and the “informational power” we are now subject to. The recent explosion of digital technologies that are turning us into a series of algorithmic data points is shown to have a deeper and more turbulent past than we commonly think. Blending philosophy, history, political theory, and media theory in conversation with thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and Friedrich Kittler, Koopman presents an illuminating perspective on how we have come to think of our personhood—and how we can resist its erosion.

Donna Haraway analyses accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs (cybernetic components); showing how deeply cultural assumptions penetrate into allegedly value-neutral medical research.

Comparative Literature is both the past and the future of literary studies. Its history is intimately linked to the political upheavals of modernity: from colonial empire-building in the nineteenth century to the postcolonial culture wars of the twenty-first century, attempts at "comparison" have defined the international agenda of literature. But what is comparative literature? Ambitious readers looking to stretch themselves are usually intrigued by the concept, but uncertain of its implications. And rightly so, in many ways: even the professionals cannot agree on a single term, calling it comparative in English, compared in French, and comparing in German. The very term itself, when approached comparatively, opens up a Pandora's box of cultural differences. Yet this, in a nutshell, is the whole point of comparative literature. To look at literature comparatively is to realize just how much can be learned by looking over the horizon of one's own culture. In an age that is paradoxically defined by migration and border crossing on the one hand, and by a retreat into monolingualism and monoculturalism on the other, the cross-cultural agenda of comparative literature has become increasingly central to the future of the Humanities. We are all, in fact, comparatists, constantly making connections across languages, cultures, and genres as we read. The question is whether we realize it. Outlining the complex history and competing theories of comparative literature, Ben Hutchinson offers an accessible means of entry into a notoriously slippery subject. Ultimately, he places comparative literature at the very heart of literary criticism, for as George Steiner once noted, "to read is to compare."
ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This book is the first to address the history and future of homegrown, mass Chinese Christianity. Drawing on a large collection of fresh sources—including contemporaneous accounts, diaries, memoirs, archival material, and interviews—Lian Xi traces the transformation of Protestant Christianity in twentieth-century China from a small, beleaguered “missionary” church buffeted by antiforeignism to an indigenous popular religion energized by nationalism and millenarianism. Lian shows that, with a current membership that rivals that of the Chinese Communist Party, and the ability to galvanize China’s millions into apocalyptic convulsion and messianic exuberance, the popular Christian movement channels the aspirations and the discontent of the masses and will play an important role in shaping the country’s future.

How does religious healing work, if indeed it does? In this study of the contemporary North American movement known as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Thomas Csordas investigates the healing practices of a modern religious movement to provide a rich cultural analysis of the healing experience. This is not only a book about healing, however, but also one about the nature of self and self- transformation. Blending ethnographic data and detailed case studies, Csordas examines processes of sensory imagery, performative utterance, orientation, and embodiment. His book forms the basis for a rapprochement between phenomenology and semiotics in culture theory that will interest anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists, physicians, and students of comparative religion and healing.

A classic of medieval studies, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 traces ideas of death and resurrection in early and medieval Christianity. Caroline Walker Bynum explores problems of the body and identity in devotional and theological literature, suggesting that medieval attitudes toward the body still shape modern notions of the individual. This expanded edition includes her 1995 article “Why All the Fuss About the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective,” which takes a broader perspective on the book’s themes. It also includes a new introduction that explores the context in which the book and article were written, as well as why the Middle Ages matter for how we think about the body and life after death today.

此书由郭茂育、刘继保主编、中国社会科学院著名墓志研究专家赵超作序、中州古籍出版社出版发行，全书收录展示宋代墓志拓片226方，且大多是新出土或尚未发表的墓志。迄今为止，在全国范围内，《宋代墓志辑释》的容纳量前所未有。这些历史材料，有助于我们加深对于宋代官阀家族与宋代政治史的认识，也让我们更清楚地了解到古代对于人事行政档案的保存情况以及修史的数据渊源，还使我们修正了对宋代墓志使用制度的认识，文献价值非常突出。

《金元全真道教史论》是一部精炼的全真道史，体现了学术研究上综合创新的方向。第一，它有史有论，叙述了全真道发生发展过程中最重要的历史事件和人物活动；又阐释了全真道研究中世人关注或有争议的若干重大问题，如第六章；还站在今天时代的高度说明了全真道的当代价值及其新形态的建构，如第十一章、第十二章。

本书以全真教宋德方派系的宫观系统为中心，重点探讨了全真道教的宫观形制和造像设置。“宫观形制”指宫观的形状、造型、总体结构，主要建筑的等级、数目、关系和位置安排等。“造像设置”指宫观内所供奉的主像，以及造像的整体安放布局。全真派宫观、造像的最大特点在于，特别强调祖师的地位，把祖师续接在传统道教主神之后，以此展示全真祖师是道教正传的继承者和全真教在道教内的正统地位。本书的重点即是探讨全真宫观、造像与全真祖师的这一密切关系。本书试图将现存的宫观和文献记录的宫观结合起来研究，把它们放到特定历史、宗派的环境中观察，把宋德方派系的宫观与其它全真宫观比较，力图找出全真宫观在形制和造像设置方面的主要特点。本书由五章组成：第一章介绍王重阳和全真教的兴起；第二章讨论全真列祖谱系的形成；第三章考察宋德方派系的宫观及其它一些全真宫观；第四章探讨全真教石窟；第五章分析永乐宫建筑、雕塑和壁画所体现的全真列祖思想。贯穿这五章的主要论点是：全真祖师的“金莲正宗”地位是全真教宣教和宫观造像的最经典主题。

本书是日本汉学界颇有代表性的研究苏轼的专著。作者山本和义不仅是日本著名汉学家小川环树的得意高足，自己也是卓有成就的知名学者，他长期研究宋诗与苏轼，吉川幸次郎曾引用过他的研究成果。该书分为三个部分，第一部分是对苏轼诗歌的研究，从苏轼人生观、自然与诗人、自然题材在苏诗中的表现、诗人的长啸、南行集、望湖楼、洋川园池诗、岭外诗等多种角度对苏轼其人其诗做出了富有深度和新意的解读，是该书的主体部分；第二部分以苏轼的《赤壁赋》为中心，对苏轼的文学表现能力和方法做了揭示；第三部分是由苏轼延展开去，对整个宋代文学的特点和发展做了鸟瞰，精义纷呈。古人云：“他山之石，可以攻玉。”借助异域之眼，不仅可以更好地了解苏轼这一伟大的作家，也可以对中日学者思维方式的不同以及互相交流的必要性有更深切的体会。

《道风百年：香港道教与道观》（ISBN 9629880954）是首部全面记录香港道教历史发展的图文专集，由游子安主编，李宏之、梁德华副主编，2002年蓬瀛仙馆道教文化数据库和利文出版社联合出版。书名“道风百年”取“道门玄风”“弘传于香港之百年”之意。本书入选2002香港书展“名家推介”三十本好书之一。
文化评论人梁文道：
又是一部图文并茂的书，也同时有助于认识的社会生活百年来演变，但它的范围放在香港，主题则是最地道的中国宗教-----道教。这部书可说是香港道教的大百科，上篇除了简介道教的源流、祭祀科仪和艺术文化之外，还扼要地把香港道教的发展和社会服务（如办学、善堂、诊所）作了一番扫描，构成了相当完整的参考资料。数个月前，育我成人的外祖父仙游。老人家病重期间，亲友们在病房外聚谈，为他拼凑出一幅大家都未曾完整掌握的传奇生平。原来抗战期间，外祖父是道教“世界红卍字会”西安方面的领导人物之一，救护灾民无数。难怪我对这个名号有一番熟悉感，大概是儿时在老人偶尔的怀旧谈话中记下了片段。近日翻看这本《道风百年》，意外地看到“世界红卍字会”在香港的道院，而且是总会所在。我想这是一种妙缘，必将择日往访，权作隔世追思。其实香港这个地方不知有多少人都和道教有自己也未必知道的缘份，看看这本书，或许可以理出头绪。
（以上內容引自 http://www.daoinfo.org/wiki/道風百年：香港道教與道觀#cite_ref-0 最後登錄日期：2012年10月27日）

最早认识自然山水之审美价值并持续进行书写，是中国文学令人瞩目的一项成就。关于自然风景的许多话语和观念都率先在诗中出现，而后方衍至绘画，成为中国古典文化的独特表达。
新加坡国立大学中文系教授萧驰花费七年时间，以十次实地考察为基础，写作了这部新著。作者以新的观察角度和理论进路，结合案头研究与户外考察，对自谢灵运被贬永嘉的永初三年迄至白居易于洛阳谢世的会昌六年这424年间的诗歌文本进行了一次大胆探索，内容涵摄了此期间最重要的十五位书写自然山水的诗人：谢灵运、鲍照、谢朓、江淹、何逊、阴铿、孟浩然、王维、李白、杜甫、韦应物、元结、柳宗元、韩愈、白居易。每章角度不同，各有侧重。以对中古诗歌审美话语的考掘，本书亦为探讨早期山水画和园林中的景观观念形成提供了线索。作者更向世人发起呼吁——中华山河不仅为古人吟咏的对象，亦是承载中国传统历史文化的广阔语境，一旦被横加破坏便再难复现。

This book, the first work in English on the history of disease in China, traces an epidemic of bubonic plague that began in Yunnan province in the late eighteenth century, spread throughout much of southern China in the nineteenth century, and eventually exploded on the world scene as a global pandemic at the end of the century.
The author finds the origins of the pandemic in Qing economic expansion, which brought new populations into contact with plague-bearing animals along China’s southwestern frontier. She shows how the geographic diffusion of the disease closely followed the growth of interregional trading networks, particularly the domestic trade in opium, during the nineteenth century. A discussion of foreign interventions during plague outbreaks along China’s southern coast links the history of plague to the political impact of imperialism on China, and to the ways in which European cultural representations of the Chinese influenced the theory and practice of colonial medicine.

剖析历代统一与分裂的经济根底
把握中国强盛与衰落的历史大格局
★ 认识中国经济史不容错过的里程碑之作，国内学者首部具有国际影响力的巨著。
★ 开创性提出“基本经济区”概念，大师级推演中国历史发展的经济逻辑。
★ 洞悉中国历史上统一与分裂的根由，回答中华文明的形成机制。
★ 作者身为解放 战争时期中共的高级经济间谍，传奇一生铸就本书精神底色。
★ 李约瑟高度赞赏本书，并多次引用本书观点；周其仁在各种场合反复推荐大众阅读。
本书创造性地提出了“基本经济区”概念，指出无论是哪一集团控制了经济繁荣、交通便利的“基本经济区”即可征服乃至统一全中国。以此概念出发，重新梳理中国经济史，描绘两千年来中国经济格局变迁的内在逻辑。
本书论点立足于经济、水利、历史地理等问题，笔锋所指却是历代中国统一与分裂的经济基础，更以此来推演中国的国家组织和形态。纵观世界历史，那些叱咤一时的大国大多烟消云散，为何中国却总能大一统？为了对抗游牧民族，中国的组织机制隐藏着什么核心秘密？翻开本书，了解一段别开生面的经济史，理解我们自己所处的大国的形成机制。
中国每一个强盛的朝代都形成了新的经济区，经济区越来越往南走，后来逐渐分离。国家靠基本经济区生存，谁控制了基本经济区，就控制了天下。掌控现有基本经济区，开辟新的基本经济区，成为历代经济政策的根本方针。
——周其仁著名经济学家、北京大学国家发展研究院经济学教授
这些见解我们容或可以闭目揣想出来，但经作者这样一证明，便使人特别确信了，用新的统计方法研究历史，得到这样好结果的恐怕还没有，作者谓其研究为前人所未试过，实在不算夸张。
——杨联陞 国际知名汉学大师、经济史家
迄今为止，所有西文书籍中有关中国历史发展方面最卓越的著作。
——李约瑟 中国科技史大师