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The Stupa of Borobudur in Java is one of the architectural wonders of the world, designed as both a mandala and as an aid for the Buddhist pilgrim that can be read as a holy book. It has inspired Anne Waldman to create a work which is at once a walking meditation, a “cultural intervention,” a “recovery” of a sacred site, and a take on contemporary reality and how the busy “monkey brain” (as it is called in Buddhism) works and travels. Exploratory and meditative, even playful at times, it expands the sense of invocation and incantation that Waldman is celebrated for, while also reflecting an engaged political/cultural awareness..
Price: $5.85 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Today it is not uncommon to find items in department stores that are hand-crafted in countries like Thailand and Costa Rica. These "traditional" crafts now make up an important part of a global market. They support local and sometimes national economies and help create and solidify cultural identity. But these crafts are not necessarily indigenous. Whereas Thailand markets crafts with a long history and cultural legacy, Costa Rica has created a local handicraft tradition where none was known to exist previously.

In Global Markets and Local Crafts, Frederick F. Wherry compares the handicraft industries of Thailand and Costa Rica to show how local cultural industries break into global markets and, conversely, how global markets affect the ways in which artisans understand, adapt, and utilize their cultural traditions. Wherry develops a new framework for studying globalization by considering the phenomenon from the perspective of the supplier instead of the market. Drawing from interviews and extensive fieldwork shadowing artisans and exporters in their daily dealings, Wherry offers a rare account of globalization in motion -- and what happens when market negotiations do not proceed as planned.

Considering economic and political forces, flows of people and materials, and frames that define cultural and market situations as they play out in the artisan communities of these two countries, Wherry uncovers how authentic folk tradition is capitalized or created.

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The book gives an introduction to $p$-adic numbers from the point of view of number theory, topology, and analysis Compared to other books on the subject, its novelty is both a particularly balanced approach to these three points of view and an emphasis on topics accessible to undergraduates. In addition, several topics from real analysis and elementary topology which are not usually covered in undergraduate courses (totally disconnected spaces and Cantor sets, points of discontinuity of maps and the Baire Category Theorem, surjectivity of isometries of compact metric spaces) are also included in the book. They will enhance the reader's understanding of real analysis and intertwine the real and $p$-adic contexts of the book. The book is based on an advanced undergraduate course given by the author. The choice of the topic was motivated by the internal beauty of the subject of $p$-adic analysis, an unusual one in the undergraduate curriculum, and abundant opportunities to compare it with its much more familiar real counterpart. The book includes a large number of exercises. Answers, hints, and solutions for most of them appear at the end of the book. Well written, with obvious care for the reader, the book can be successfully used in a topic course or for self-study..
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