The book is an introduction to the study of culture, with emphasis on the dynamism factor intrinsic and susceptible to generating growth, development initiatives and change, especially in religion and other aspects of Nigerian society. The collection of 19 papers is organised into five parts: Concepts and Theoretical Alignments, Social Institutions in Culture Change and Development, Religious Traditions and Change Experience, Votaries and Sectarian Reaction to Culture and Religious Change, and Pastoral Objective and the Management of Cultural Diversity and Change in Christianity.

Developing Cultures: Essays on Cultural Change is a collection of 21 expert essays on the institutions that transmit cultural values from generation to generation. The essays are an outgrowth of a research project begun by Samuel Huntington and Larry Harrison in their widely discussed book Culture Matters the goal of which is guidelines for cultural change that can accelerate development in the Third World. The essays in this volume cover child rearing, several aspects of education, the world's major religions, the media, political leadership, and development projects. The book is companion volume to Developing Cultures: Case Studies.(0415952808).

Religion is living culture. It continues to play a role in shaping political ideologies, institutional practices, communities of interest, ways of life and social identities. Mediating Faiths brings together scholars working across a range of fields, including cultural studies, media, sociology, anthropology, cultural theory and religious studies, in order to facilitate greater understanding of recent transformations. Contributors illustrate how religion continues to be responsive to the very latest social and cultural developments in the environments in which it exists. They raise fundamental questions concerning new media and religious expression, religious youth cultures, the links between spirituality, personal development and consumer culture, and contemporary intersections of religion, identity and politics. Together the chapters demonstrate how belief in the superempirical is negotiated relative to secular concerns in the twenty-first century.

Despite America's famous "separation of Church and State," religion obviously holds an enormous influence on nearly all aspects of society. Prof. Falk looks at major traditional religious groupings in the US and discusses how they influence the family, education, government, the economy, philanthropy, violence, music, and the media. Western society is becoming less religious, more secular, every day, as science answers some of the profound questions that inspired a belief in the supernatural. But society requires more than the laws of physics to hold it together, of course, and so far religion is the institution that has provided the most clear-cut moral guidelines, even for non-believers. Religion has also inspired many of our greatest artistic endeavors. But reliogion can also be used for crass commercial intersts or worse, to divide people and fuel violence. Drawing parallels and contrasts between Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, and Judaism, Dr. Falk talks about history and philosophy, political campaigns, social movements, popular music, literature and life. He shows how religious traditions influence us and how they impact politics, social stratification and even the military.

This volume presents multidisciplinary perspectives on the role of cultural values and religious beliefs in adolescent development.

"In sixteen landmark essays Anthony F. C. Wallace illuminates the interconnections between cognition and culture and the formative social conditions of the modern world. Probing the psychological reality (or realities) of culture, Wallace offers incisive analyses of the cognitive foundations of kinship terms and the ability of cultures, past and present, to process complexity. He also examines whether beavers have a culture and reveals how the mazeway of modern American culture equips and enables a routine drive to work. In the volume’s second section, Wallace interrogates the consequences of revolutionary changes in labor, technology, and society in the modern world. A series of essays details the multifaceted, pervasive impact of the Industrial Revolution on the coal-mining communities of Rockdale and Saint Clair, Pennsylvania. He also considers the implications of the disaster-prone coal-mining industry for risky technological enterprises today, such as nuclear power plants. An in-depth comparison between the administrative structures of a modern university and Iroquois-Seneca leadership rounds out this volume."--pub. description.