A new addition to the University of Pittsburgh Press Composition, Literacy, and Culture series.

The hills of the Appalachia region hold secrets—dark, deep, varied, and mysterious. These secrets are often told in the form of eerie, thrilling, and creepy folk tales that reveal strange sightings, curious oddities, and commonly serve as cautionary tales for eager and curious ears. These spine-tingling stories have been told and retold by family members, neighbors, and "hillfolk" for generations. Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers is a collection of weird, otherworldly, and supernatural phenomenon in Eastern Kentucky—tales that have been recorded and documented for the first time. Collected and adapted by Matthew Sparks and Olivia Sizemore, the anthology explores stories of ghosts or "haints," strange creatures or "boogers," haunted locations or "stained earth," uncanny happenings or "high strangeness," and humorous Appalachian ghost stories. Contemporary yarns of black panthers, demons, and sightings of ghostly coal miners are narrated in the first person, reflecting the style and dialect of the collected oral history. Though comprised of a mixture of claimed accounts and fabricated lore, the locations and people woven throughout are very real. Complemented with evocative watercolor illustrations by Olivia Sizemore (who was inspired by the work of Stephen Gammell) and a compendium that provides additional context, Haint Country is a thrilling and bone-chilling excursion to the spooky corner of Appalachia.

When people think of Kentucky, three things usually come to mind: bourbon, Colonel Sanders's secret chicken recipe, and the glamorous Kentucky Derby. Add college basketball to that list, and you have yourself a superfecta. Looking beyond these time-honored traditions, however, visitors will find in Kentucky a diverse patchwork of faces and places, each as unique as the state's geography. Kentucky, Y'all: A Celebration of the People and Culture of the Bluegrass State is an entertaining and informative compilation of the state's favorite oddities, cultural quirks, traditions, and rites of passage. Authors and proud Kentuckians Blair Thomas Hess and Cameron M. Ludwick share the best stories from their experiences as writers, travelers, and residents in this ode to the Commonwealth. From the iconic to the obscure, the book reveals vital knowledge that every Kentuckian—whether by birth, residence, or simply in mind and heart—should know. What is beer cheese? Who was Bill Monroe? Where can you get a hemp hot dog? Readers are introduced to the brilliant minds behind the Louisville Slugger, the Bowie Knife, and pioneering work in genetics. The book also includes a handy list of dos and don'ts of tailgating, a Kentucky sayings glossary, and bucket lists of things to do, drink, read, and eat.Featuring hand-drawn illustrations that represent life, fashion, and entertainment in the Commonwealth, Kentucky, Y'all is an insightful and exuberant guide to the Bluegrass State—for Kentucky natives and visitors alike.

This book examines the model developed in the Nordic countries for handling labor market relations between employers and employees - a model that has secured flexible and well-functioning labor market relations with comparatively high remuneration in case of sickness or unemployment. Consensual - and comparatively efficient - policies have likewise been pursued in agricultural and industrial policies, in environmental policies, and in many policies related to public services. The preconditions for these policies are strong civil societies, i. e. strong capacities for collective mobilization and collective action among groups, relatively strong unitary states, and high levels of generalised trust. The institutional apparatus of these consensual policies has been labelled corporatism. Nordic corporatism has implied consent to a norm of affected interests. Groups that are supposedly affected by state policies have access to the processes leading up to political decision-making, and are involved in the implementation of policies. This access has often public commissions or committees charged with preparing political decisions and delivering advice, as well as policy implementation committees.

The Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) enjoy some of the happiest populations and highest standards of living in the world, thanks in part to stable, democratic systems of government. Here, David Delfs Erbo Andersen presents a syncretic history of political and socioeconomic developments in the three Scandinavian countries since the early modern period, and contrasts their peaceful transitions with the more dramatic histories of otherwise similar European countries, like France and Germany. Unlike these and many other countries—the United States among them—Scandinavia’s transition to democracy from monarchy was not marked by major violent upheavals or extreme political antagonism. Rather, Scandinavia’s peaceful process of democratization owed itself to the development of a penetrative bureaucracy in the early modern period and the activism of cooperative associations, first of farmers in the early nineteenth century and then of industrialized workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thanks to the gradual, relatively consensual adoption of political reforms and social norms, the history of ”Nordic democratic exceptionalism” today helps account for the ongoing stability of the Scandinavian countries.

Study after study has shown that Scandinavia is the most trusting region in the world. Danes in particular trust other people and organizations—including strangers, businesses, governments, law enforcement, and media—more than the citizens of any other country. And countries with deep pools of social trust are populated by individuals who cooperate with each other in ways that allow public and private institutions to function more efficiently and cheaply. Is the Nordic countries’ high level of social trust just as important for creating prosperity and happiness within a population as other, more tangible economic factors? If so, where does this stock of social trust in Scandinavia come from? Does it help to explain the development of the universal welfare states and their surprisingly high business competitiveness? Can other nations learn from the region and apply that knowledge to settings where social trust levels are low or in danger of erosion? Social trust has proven economic value, and Gert Tinggaard Svendsen and Christian Bjørnskov warn that its benefits should never be taken for granted. Trust can dissolve and vanish quickly, and once gone, it is very difficult to rebuild. Governments and corporations are gradually increasing their control over people’s public and private lives, with predictably worrying results. When people feel taken advantage of or lied to, public confidence evaporates. Since strong social cohesion drives long-term prosperity, Nordic exceptionalism on maintaining and restoring trust offers valuable lessons.

Old men - and especially old men living alone - remain an understudied group in the gerontological literature. The old man does, however, constitute a large part of the considerable demographic development, and old men living alone make up a rapidly increasing proportion of the elderly. This book is an anthology of different perspectives on the old man: What is it like to become an old man? Told by an old man. Furthermore, ideas about the old man through our cultural history and the first research on the very old man. Alcohol as a prism on how it is to become an old man. The old man and sexuality. The old man in a digitized world. Old men and masculinities. The single old man, lonely or just living alone? And several other relevant topics concerning the old man. The book takes a much-needed focus on the old man. The authors are researchers from different disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, theology, anthropology, health and gender studies.

A vivid and intricate study of dance music traditions that reveals the many contradictions of Syrian identity in the 21st centuryDabke, one of Syria's most beloved dance music traditions, is at the center of the country's war and the social tensions that preceded conflict. Drawing on almost two decades of ethnographic, archival, and digital research, Shayna M. Silverstein shows how dabke dance music embodies the fraught dynamics of gender, class, ethnicity, and nationhood in an authoritarian state. The book situates dabke politically, economically, and historically in a broader account of expressive culture in Syria's recent (and ongoing) turmoil. Silverstein shows how people imagine the Syrian nation through dabke, how the state has coopted it, how performances of masculinity reveal—and play with—the tensions and complexities of the broader social imaginary, how forces opposed to the state have used it resistively, and how migrants and refugees have reimagined it in their new homes in Europe and the United States. She offers deeply thoughtful reflections on the ethnographer's ethical and political dilemmas on fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Silverstein's study ultimately questions the limits of authoritarian power, considering the pleasure and play intrinsic to dabke circles as evidence for how performance cultures sustain social life and solidify group bonds while reproducing the societal divides endemic to Syrian authoritarianism.

During funerals of nobles in the Kuba kingdom (Democratic Republic of Congo), visitors used to theatrically offer so-called bongotols to the deceased and the mourning family. These highly appreciated valuables were either positioned under the corpse to support it or displayed on top of it.In addition to their religious meaning they displayed the status and wealth of both givers and takers. Visitors would receive similar items in return. Afterwards the bongotols were stashed until, on occasion of a next burial, they would continue their cycles of gift and counter gift among the titled Kuba aristocracy.Death and display brings ethnographic research and archival sources to bear on these intriguing heirlooms. Their rich iconography offers a kaleidoscope of traditional Kuba sociality, cosmology and ritual.

Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future uses the lens of queer ecologies to explore environmental destruction in Appalachia while mapping out alternative futures that follow from critical queer perspectives on the United States' exploitation of the land. With essays by Lis Regula, Jessica Cory, Chet Pancake, Tijah Bumgarner, MJ Eckhouse, and other essential thinkers, this collection brings to light both emergent and long-standing marginalized perspectives that give renewed energy to the struggle for a sustainable future. A new and valuable contribution to the field of Appalachian studies, rural queer studies, Indigenous studies, and ethnographic studies of the United States, Deviant Hollers presents a much-needed objection to the status quo of academic work, as well as to the American exceptionalism and white supremacy pervading US politics and the broader geopolitical climate. By focusing on queer critiques and acknowledging the status of Appalachia as a settler colony, Deviant Hollers offers new possibilities for a reimagined way of life.

Rural life and culture hold a practical and symbolic importance in American society. A central tenet to the survival of our cherished values—and of ourselves as a species—is the stewardship of cultural diversity and the places that foster it, like rural America. These may be the places that teach us to use land to make a living and to make a life, to forge and carry on our identities, and to feel history. They may yield a harvest of policies for managing an environmental balancing act that will preserve essential resources for America's children's children.Power and Place: Preservation, Progress, and the Culture War over Land examines the ongoing culture wars that pit conservation against economic progress. For author Melinda Bollar Wagner, what began as a study of Appalachia's long-standing and continuing status as an energy sacrifice zone evolved into a twenty-four-year research project that sheds new light on the physical and emotional parameters of cultural attachment to land. Drawing on interviews with more than 220 residents from ten communities in five Appalachian counties, Power and Place gives voice to rural citizens whose place at the table is far from assured with regard to critical energy, environmental, and infrastructure decisions.

This book highlights aspects of the spiritual culture within Islam that flourished along the 'Silk Roads' – the term coined by Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877 to describe the web of caravan routes that connected China, South and Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The movement of goods and of people was accompanied by the circulation of ideas, bringing about a vivid exchange in the cultural sphere – sufism, or tasawwuf, was one such idea. Focusing on this theme, these conference proceedings draw attention to the multiple dimensions embraced by tasawwuf, both in its temporal (i. e. historical, ethnographical and social) context, as well as its atemporal one (i.e. concerning spirituality and the ways this is conveyed and transmitted, both in the past and in the present).

Across a range of industrial, domestic, and agricultural sites, Greer shows how repetitive discursive performances served as rhetorical tools as women workers sought to rescript power relations in their workplaces and to resist narratives about their laboring lives. The case studies reveal noteworthy patterns in how these women’s words helped to construct the complex web of class relations in which they were enmeshed. Rather than a teleological narrative of economic empowerment over the course of a century, Unorganized Women speaks to the enduring obstacles low- and no-wage women face, their creativity and resilience in the face of adversity, and the challenges that impede the creation of meaningful coalitions. By focusing on repetitive rhetorical labor, this book affords a point of entry for analyzing the discursive productions of a range of women workers and for constructing a richer history of women’s rhetoric in the United States.

This private collection of African dolls, sometimes spontaneously decorated with beadwork, are witnesses of people's hopes and beliefs. The book is richly illustrated with overviews and detailed photographs of the objects and, apart from a description of their history, also gives the reader a personal account of collecting these dolls single-handedly over a period of 45 years.

_Hemispheric Blackness and the Exigencies of Accountability _examines the way Afrodescendant and Black communities use the land on which they live, the rule of law, and their bodies to assert their historical, ontological, and physical presence across South, Central, and North America. Their demand for the recognition of ancestral lands, responsive policies, and human rights sheds new light on their permanent yet tenuous presence throughout the region. The authors argue that by deploying a discourse of transcontinental historical continuity, Black communities assert their presence in local, national, and international political spheres. This conceptualization of hemispheric Blackness is the driving force confronting the historical loss, dismissal, and disparagement of Black lives across the Américas. Through twelve case studies that cover a wide range of locations, their work examines contemporary manifestations of sovereignty of Black body and mind, Black-Indigenous nexuses, and national revisions that challenge more than a quincentennial of denial and state unaccountability in the hemisphere.