From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny.

In this book, Catherine Bell off...

The Silk Road was the current name for a complex of ancient trade routes linking East Asia with Central Asia, South Asia, and the Mediterranean world. This network of exchange emerged along the borders between agricultural China and the steppe nomads during the Han Dynasty (206BCE-220CE), in consequence of the inter-dependence and the conflicts of these two distinctive societies. In their quest for horses, fragrances, and spices, gems, glassware, and other exotics from the lands to their west...

Winner of the James Coleman Award for Best Book from the Rationality and Society section of the American Sociological Society Winner of the Outstanding Recent Contribution from the Social Psychology section of the American Sociological Association. Winner of the Best Publication Award from the Mental Health section of the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, PROSE Book Award, Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, from the Association of American Publishers. When people are faci...

Designed for advanced undergraduate or first-year graduate courses in semiconductor or microelectronic fabrication, Fabrication Engineering at the Micro- and Nanoscale, Fourth Edition, covers the entire basic unit processes used to fabricate integrated circuits and other devices.

This volume provides a comprehensive reference grammar of Gothic, the earliest attested language of the Germanic family (apart from runic inscriptions). It is the first in English to draw on the recently discovered Bologna fragment and Crimean graffiti, in addition to the traditional Bible translation explored in most works to date.

Games live and die commercially on the player experience. Games User Research is collectively the way we optimise the quality of the user experience (UX) in games, working with all aspects of a game from the mechanics and interface, visuals and art, interaction and progression, making sure every element works in concert and supports the game UX. This means that Games User Research is essential and integral to the production of games and to shape the experience of players.

Today, Games User Re...

Leading the reader from the fundamental principles of inorganic chemistry, right through to cutting-edge research at the forefront of the subject, Inorganic Chemistry, Seventh Edition is the ideal course companion for the duration of a student's degree. The authors have drawn upon their extensive teaching and research experience to update this text; the seventh edition retains the much-praised clarity of style and layout from previous editions, while offering an enhanced section on 'expanding...

Competition is responsible for much of the prosperity around us. Competitive markets deliver lower prices, better quality, abundance of choice, and increased innovation. But while competition benefits the consumers, it can prove challenging to producers and sellers, who need to constantly improve to stay in business. As a result, sellers may sometimes look for ways to dampen the competitive process.

Our antitrust and competition laws are designed to address these risks and safeguard consumer ...

The study of Islamic philosophy has entered a new and exciting phase in the last few years. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. Most twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy has focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth.

It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in thefield that, unlike other refer...