Regulating Aversion - Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire

How did powder and paint, once scorned as immoral, become indispensable to millions of respectable women? How did a "kitchen physic," as homemade cosmetics were once called, become a multibillion-dollar industry? And how did men finally take over that rarest of institutions, a woman's business?

In Hope in a Jar, historian Kathy Peiss gives us the first full-scale social history of America's beauty culture, from the buttermilk and rice powder recommended by Victorian recipe books to the mass-produced products of our contemporary consumer age. She shows how women, far from being pawns and victims, used makeup to declare their freedom, identity, and sexual allure as they flocked to enter public life. And she highlights the leading role of white and black women—Helena Rubenstein and Annie Turnbo Malone, Elizabeth Arden and Madame C. J. Walker—in shaping a unique industry that relied less on advertising than on women's customs of visiting and conversation. Replete with the voices and experiences of ordinary women, Hope in a Jar is a richly textured account of the ways women created the cosmetics industry and cosmetics created the modern woman.

Polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, punishing women for being raped, differential access for men and women to health care and education, unequal rights of ownership, assembly, and political participation, unequal vulnerability to violence. These practices and conditions are standard in some parts of the world. Do demands for multiculturalism--and certain minority group rights in particular--make them more likely to continue and to spread to liberal democracies? Are there fundamental conflicts between our commitment to gender equity and our increasing desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions? In this book, the eminent feminist Susan Moller Okin and fifteen of the world's leading thinkers about feminism and multiculturalism explore these unsettling questions in a provocative, passionate, and illuminating debate.

Okin opens by arguing that some group rights can, in fact, endanger women. She points, for example, to the French government's giving thousands of male immigrants special permission to bring multiple wives into the country, despite French laws against polygamy and the wives' own bitter opposition to the practice. Okin argues that if we agree that women should not be disadvantaged because of their sex, we should not accept group rights that permit oppressive practices on the grounds that they are fundamental to minority cultures whose existence may otherwise be threatened.

In reply, some respondents reject Okin's position outright, contending that her views are rooted in a moral universalism that is blind to cultural difference. Others quarrel with Okin's focus on gender, or argue that we should be careful about which group rights we permit, but not reject the category of group rights altogether. Okin concludes with a rebuttal, clarifying, adjusting, and extending her original position. These incisive and accessible essays--expanded from their original publication in Boston Review and including four new contributions--are indispensable reading for anyone interested in one of the most contentious social and political issues today.

The diverse contributors, in addition to Okin, are Azizah al-Hibri, Abdullahi An-Na'im, Homi Bhabha, Sander Gilman, Janet Halley, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka, Martha Nussbaum, Bhikhu Parekh, Katha Pollitt, Robert Post, Joseph Raz, Saskia Sassen, Cass Sunstein, and Yael Tamir.

A beautiful island lying in the northern part of the Irish Sea between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, the Isle of Man was once a popular holiday destination. It is perhaps better known today for the TT motorcycle races held there, its tailless cats and Manx kippers. However, it also has its darker side.

Manx Murders is a collection of gripping and mysterious murder cases committed on the Island over the last 150 years, from the brutal slaying of a spinster one dark night on a lonely track near Ramsey to the infamous 'Golden Egg Murder' in central Douglas.

The cases that have caused shock and sensation throughout two centuries of the Island's history are recorded here as the author reveals the events behind the last hanging on the Island, a deathbead confession, the harrowing story of a murderous father and the cases that remain unsolved to this day. The Island's political importance as a wartime holding area for prisoners of war is also explored through the account of a bizarre, seemingly motiveless killing in 1916 and the stabbing of a Finnish prisoner during the Second World War.

Using information obtained from newspapers, inquest records and trial transcripts whenever these were available, each murder is described against the backdrop of contemporary events to give the reader a distinct flavour of life at the time of the crime. While each case is unique, all share an overwhelming sadness and tragedy that will never be forgotten.

Shiver at the story of the malevolent apparition of 50 Berkeley Square no one has survived seeing.

Listen for the tapping cane, when Jeremy Bentham�s mummified body walks through the corridors of University College.

Watch out for the Roman centurion who still patrols the causeway linking Mersea Island to Essex.

Shudder at the ghosts of kings and queens that keep returning to their old home at Windsor.

Beware the black dog of Shap Fell: a sighting presages fatal accidents.

England�s history echoes with stories of unquiet spirits and hauntings, of headless highwaymen and grey ladies, of premonitions of death and indelible blood-stains. Here, county by county and place by place, Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson gather together all the most interesting supernatural tales from The Lore of the Land. From a ghostly army marching across Cumbria to landlords� appeals against rates (because no one will rent their haunted house), from the phantom hitchhiker of the Blackwall Tunnel to Francis Drake�s drum summoning him when England is in danger, these fascinating and unforgettable stories are part of our legendary past � and present.