"This is an exciting and visionary book, showing why an age of culture is necessary and how it can be achieved." -- Biserka Cvjeticanin, Director, Culturelink/Institute for Development and International Relations.
"Paul Schafer believes that we are standing at the threshold of a new era of global development and human affairs that should be driven by a holistic cultural perspective." -- Robert Palmer, former Director of Democratic Governance, Culture, and Diversity at the Council of Europe.
"Paul Schafer's vision of the centrality of culture to our lives, to societal development, and to the future of civilization has shaped policy development at the local, national, and international levels over the past four decades. His message cannot be ignored." -- Joyce Zemans, York University. 
In this ground-breaking work, cultural scholar D. Paul Schafer draws on a lifetime of research and reflection to consider the implications of what he calls the cultural world view and the promise it holds for a more humane and fulfilling future.
Arguing that the current world system is overly dominated by economic ways of thinking about and acting within the world, Schafer considers what would be the prerequisites for a cultural age, the ways in which a cultural age would transform patterns of human life, and the advances in human fulfilment that the adoption of such an age and its associated values would bring.
Since the first international conference on cultural policy was held in Venice in 1970, culture has grown to be of increasing interest and importance to nations and individuals alike. Delegates at the 2013 International Congress on Culture in Hangzhou, China, declared cultural issues to be central to sustainable development, with a later session initiated by the UN's General Assembly placing culture squarely at the centre of the sustainability agenda.
In less than fifty years, culture has moved from being seen as a peripheral activity in the world to being utterly indispensable to the achievement of vital social and developmental goals. It is now apparent that culture (and by this is meant culture in the broadest sense, as the sum of human experience and achievement) is intimately connected to all the world's most pressing problems -- and may hold the solution to many of them.
Such problems are legion in today's world: climate change, glaring inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income, resource depletion, and conflicts between different nations, ethnic groups, and individuals. None of these problems can be addressed effectively, much less resolved, without recourse to the holistic, all-encompassing perspective that culture provides. Narrow views no longer suffice, and the status quo is unacceptable.
Paul Schafer has spent much of his life wrestling with these problems and demonstrating why culture has a crucial role to play in coming to grips with them. We ignore the book's timely, urgent, yet ultimately hopeful message at our peril.

The Age of Culture

Politics & Social Sciences

Schafer, D. Paul

Social Sciences

Rock's Mills Press

This exciting new book explores the lived conditions and experiences of trauma among the forcibly displaced, refugees, and migrants -- those who are uprooted from their places of origin -- tracing their journeys of transition to sites of arrival. Bringing together contributions by scholars, activists, professionals, and practitioners from a variety of fields and backgrounds, Roots and Routes of Displacement and Trauma is one of the first works of its kind to interrogate the social, political, and economic contexts of forced displacement in relation to its traumatic outcomes.The goal of the book is to encourage students and practitioners to critically analyze the causes and contexts of displacement. The resilience and strengths of migrants are emphasized, and readers are encouraged to learn what it means for people to adapt in the face of their new lived realities while challenging oppression.Among the topics explored in the book are theoretical approaches to displacement and trauma; the impact of environmental disasters, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict, gun violence, and employment trauma on displacement and trauma; the experiences of specific groups with respect to displacement, trauma, and healing, including indigenous peoples of Canada, the Maya of Guatemala, Roma, and Iraqi and Afghan women; ethical issues related to working with refugees; the effects of government policy on the lives of refugees in receiving countries; and the challenges faced by practitioners in working with migrants and refugees. The book is an invaluable resource for practitioners and scholars, as well as required reading for students in social work, social service and community worker, and immigrant studies programs.

Roots and Routes of Displacement and Trauma: From Analysis to Advocacy and Policy to Practice

Pashang, Soheila

Gruner, Sheila

Human identities unravel under the light of the Midsummer moon . . .  Shakespeare's popular comedy probes both the light and the dark side of desire, as unseen beings manipulate individual perceptions in the forest beyond the civilized world. Andrew Bretz's thought-provoking introduction to the play reminds us of the early modern concept of fairies: far from the ethereal creatures of the Victorian imagination, we see them here as amoral, energetic, and dangerous. While fairies may have come and gone in the course of 150 years of Canadian productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, this edition highlights how performances in Canada and elsewhere in the world have embraced the multitude of possibilities inherent within this uncanny "shaping fantasy." ... includes concise “Character Synopses”, boldfacing the names of all characters so that relationships between and amongst them are clear, and equally helpful is the “Plot Synopsis” which follows the “Character Synopses”, summarizing the scene-by-scene action in each act.... Preceding the actual text of [the] play, there is “A Note on the Text”, providing information about the quarto and folio publications ... and explaining the challenges faced by editors of any new editions of Shakespearean text.... Clearly-referenced footnotes clarify unfamiliar words, expressions, and provide explanatory material. The notes are comprehensive, referring to both print and electronic resources which were consulted.... Rather unusual, I thought, was the section entitled “Ten Tips for Reading Shakespeare”, which offered insights into a diverse range of subjects, including concepts of social status, how words might have been pronounced in Shakespeare’s time, and Shakespeare’s rich use of Classical and Biblical references. --Joanne Peters, CM Magazine, January 2017

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare Made in Canada)

Literature & Fiction

Shakespeare., William

Dramas & Plays

A moving novel of love, loss, and coming of age set in First World War Canada . . . The “war to end all wars” took a terrible toll at home as well as in the trenches of the Western front. In Rilla of Ingleside, famed Canadian novelist Lucy Maud Montgomery has crafted a moving account of one girl’s coming of age in wartime. In this novel of endurance and sacrifice on the Canadian home front, young and old alike share the experience of fear, dread, love and loss, in the end emerging into a new post-war world forged in fire yet imbued with hope. Extensive notes not only relate the events of Rilla to other novels by Montgomery recounting the life of Anne of Green Gables and her family, but also provide vital historical background on the events of the time—events that are integral to the novel’s plot and characterization. The result is a book that not only remains a “good read” nearly a century after it was first published, but which also serves as a window into another time and place—one ever more removed from our contemporary world yet in its hopes and fears still as immediate as the morning headlines. “L.M. Montgomery did for women’s imaginative lives what Susan B. Anthony did for women’s political lives.”—Meghan O’Rourke, Slate.com

Rilla of Ingleside (Milestones in Canadian Literature)

Montgomery., L. M.

Classics

A lively and comprehensive study of the creation of the Canadian civil service by one of Canada’s finest historians ...Granatstein’s classic book remains the only comprehensive account of the formative years of the federal civil service. Drawing on extensive archival research and in-depth interviews with the surviving “Ottawa men” and their colleagues, Granatstein shows how a small group of individuals, including men such as Lester Pearson, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and become Prime Minister of Canada, worked to create what many observers acknowledged as the most effective public service in the Western world, leading Canada through the Great Depression and World War Two to full nationhood and a major role after the war as the world’s leading “middle power.” This re-issue includes a new introduction by the author that surveys research since the book was originally published, as well as a new portfolio of photographs.Extensive notes, a bibliographical essay dealing with primary sources, and a full index make the book a useful reference. Where necessary, corrections have been made to the text of the original edition.

The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins 1935-1957 (Milestones in Canadian Nonfiction)

History

Granatstein, J.L.

Americas

Preface by Paul Gross
"Hamlet is bottomless, deep beyond our capacity to compass, navigating the most guarded mysteries of our lives." --Paul Gross
Shakespeare's longest and perhaps most influential play probes the darkest reaches of human life: despair, powerlessness, uncertainty, and mortality, as well as the larger political issues of corruption, iniquity, and treason. Daniel Fischlin's groundbreaking introduction explores not just the workings of the play itself but also how the spectral presence of Hamlet in Canada speaks to ineffable questions of political identity, uncertainty, and longing for right actions.
From productions of Hamlet at Stratford to Robert LePage's Elsineur and Yves Sioui Durand/Jean-Frederic Messier's Hamlet-le-Malecite, Hamlet seems to be a ghost haunting the Canadian collectivity, as undead as the ghost of Hamlet's father. As Fischlin observes, the struggle to read the world--a spectral world capable of ghosts and hauntings but also a material world of corruption and evil--makes Hamlet's effort to take a righteous course of action profoundly tragic.
... includes concise “Character Synopses”, boldfacing the names of all characters so that relationships between and amongst them are clear, and equally helpful is the “Plot Synopsis” which follows the “Character Synopses”, summarizing the scene-by-scene action in each act.... Preceding the actual text of [the] play, there is “A Note on the Text”, providing information about the quarto and folio publications ... and explaining the challenges faced by editors of any new editions of Shakespearean text.... Clearly-referenced footnotes clarify unfamiliar words, expressions, and provide explanatory material. The notes are comprehensive, referring to both print and electronic resources which were consulted.... Rather unusual, I thought, was the section entitled “Ten Tips for Reading Shakespeare”, which offered insights into a diverse range of subjects, including concepts of social status, how words might have been pronounced in Shakespeare’s time, and Shakespeare’s rich use of Classical and Biblical references. --Joanne Peters, CM Magazine, January 2017

Hamlet (Shakespeare Made in Canada)

In Flows: A Network Approach to Social Inequality, sociologist Lorne Tepperman of the University of Toronto and co-author Sally Chiang propose an exciting new way of looking at the social world.Society, they suggest, is an enormously complicated, interrelated system of flows – flows of information, flows of people, and flows of capital, to name just a few. Through processes like diffusion and migration, manifested in everyday life through such phenomena as gossip, the formation of cliques, and the movement of people from one country to another, flows reshape the world we live in, determining its shape and future. The authors examine what social scientists have learned about flows, drawing on research not only from sociology but from related fields such as psychology, medicine, and management. In particular, they focus on what the study of flows reveals about the age-old problem of human inequality: why it exists and why it persists.Flows do more than reshape the world. They shape our individual futures, too. By understanding flows, we are better able to understand not only how the world works, but how we might make it a better place, both for ourselves and others.

Flows: A Network Approach to Social Inequality

Tepperman, Lorne

Chiang, Sally

Sociology

Meet the "invisible apes" ... 
The first thing you should know about gibbons is that they are not monkeys! They are apes, just like chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, and like these larger--and much better known--"great apes," gibbons are counted among humanity's closest living relatives on the evolutionary tree. In fact, the genetic codes of human beings and gibbons are 95 percent alike.
But gibbons have long been invisible in the West. In this first-of-its-kind book, noted author John Steckley sets out to remedy that situation. As you'll discover, gibbons are extraordinary brachiators--their ability to swing rapidly through the forest from tree to tree would put even Spider-Man to shame--as well as beautiful singers and doting parents. 
Steckley introduces us to the diverse and enchanting group of gibbons he himself has met personally, including the fun-loving and impish Penelope, as well as gibbons elsewhere who have played prominent roles in gibbon (and human) affairs. By the time you've finished Gibbons: The Invisible Apes, the "small apes" (as Steckley calls them) will never be invisible to you again.

Gibbons: The Invisible Apes

Science & Math

StEckley, John

Nature & Ecology

"The Johnson Family Treasury is a superb collection of previously unpublished English cookery and medicinal recipes, some dating back as far as the 1740s. Thanks to the research of those who annotated this manuscript for publication, the book also gives us deep insight into the daily lives of its multiple authors. In addition, it makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of British, Canadian, and American culinary history. Congratulations!"
--Andrew F. Smith, editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Compiled over the latter half of the long eighteenth century, the receipts in this collection offer a fascinating glimpse into household technology, domestic medicine, and new foods available to the middle classes in an age of expanding colonialism. Published as facsimile copies alongside transcriptions, this treasury represents the collected knowledge of a coterie of women from at least one family. In the days before women’s magazines became a popular source of information, the span of knowledge here is impressive: recipes include everything from pea soup to more exotic “floating islands,” wines made from sage, damsons, cowslip, ginger, orange, cherries, currants, lemons, and raisins (plus several cures for hangovers). Equally fascinating are the medicinal receipts that cover a wide range of health problems, from “wind in the stomach” to worms, scurvy, and cancer.
As Nathalie Cooke's probing introduction tells us, there are also stories here, woven into the multiple handwritings, the annotation in the margins, and use of outside sources.
"It is the large number of medicinal receipts ... that renders this particular manuscript so distinctive.... Written at a time when both printed cookbooks and domestic medicine advice books were growing in popularity, but before the advent of ladies' magazines, the manuscript helps us better understand how the compilers of these books collected and shared knowledge.... An especially useful set of indexes compiled by the editors, including a complete index, an index of all the medicinal topics, and an index of those topics sorted by the main contributors, makes it very easy to use the volume in a variety of different ways." --Arlene Shaner, The New York Academy of Medicine, in Watermark: Newsletter of the Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences

The Johnson Family Treasury: A Collection of Household Recipes and Remedies, 1741-1848

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Harvey, Kathryn

Cooke, Nathalie

Yanota, Erin

Cooking Education & Reference

Available together in a single volume for the first time are Canadian anthropologist Diamond Jenness’ pioneering studies of three Athapaskan nations: the prairie-dwelling Tsuu T’ina of Alberta, and the Sekani and Wet’suwet’en in British Columbia’s mountainous northern interior. Based on his wide-ranging interviews with elders in the 1920s, these richly detailed and sympathetic ethnographies comprise a valuable record of the histories and cultures of indigenous communities, like myriad others across the country and around the world, struggling to preserve their autonomy and traditions in the face of relentless assimilative forces.
This edition contains original black and white photography, Jenness’ own drawings, and a wealth of stories collected firsthand from his informants. And in a new preface, Barnett Richling sketches the disciplinary and institutional background to early northern Athapaskan researches, and describes the local conditions Jenness met, and the methods he employed, while in the field. The work of one of Canada’s most distinguished anthropologists, this trio of keenly observed and meticulously drawn accounts remains fascinating reading to this day.
Diamond Jenness was a diligent and talented ethnographer, and the years 1921-1924 were particularly productive. . . . [Jenness] did his ethnographic work through Canada's Department of Mines and Resources. Jenness has been criticized for writing ethnography rather than theory, but looking back on his work almost a century later, one can see theories flourish and disappear while ethnography remains. In these studies, Jenness demonstrates his ability to record an astonishing amount of ethnographic information in a relatively short period of time. His fieldwork was based on intensive collaborative interviews with knowledgeable members of the communities he visited." --Robin Ridington, BC Studies

Three Athapaskan Ethnographies: Diamond Jenness on the Sekani, Tsuu T'ina and Wet'suwet'en, 1921-1924 (Milestones in Canadian Nonfiction)

Jenness, Diamond

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