Re Made in Japan or The First American Frontier

Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society

Author: Joseph J Jay Tobin

Colonel Sanders, Elvis, Mickey Mouse, and Jack Daniels have been enthusiastically embraced by Japanese consumers in recent decades. But rather than simply imitate or borrow from the West, the Japanese reinterpret and transform Western products and practices to suit their culture. This entertaining and enlightening book shows how in the process of domesticating foreign goods and customs, the Japanese have created a culture in which once-exotic practices (such as ballroom dancing) have become familiar, and once-familiar practices (such as public bathing) have become exotic. Written by scholars in anthropology, sociology, and the humanities, the book ranges from analyses of Tokyo Disneyland and the Japanese passion for the Argentinean tango to discussions of the Japanese haute couture and the search for an authentic nouvelle cuisine japonaise. These topics are approached from a variety of perspectives, with explorations of the interrelations of culture, ideology, and national identity and analyses of the roles that gender, class, generational, and regional differences play in the patterning of Japanese consumption. The result is a fascinating look at a dynamic society that is at once like and unlike our own.

New interesting book: Corporate Finance Theory or Computer Integrated Manufacturing

The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860

Author: Wilma A Dunaway

Outsiders have had a long-running love affair with Southern Appalachia. Setting forth at the Gulf of Mexico, the Spaniards undertook three sixteenth-century expeditions into the inland mountains to search for silver and the 'fountain of youth' among the vast indigenous chiefdoms of northern Georgia.