Crying Shame: Metaculture, Modernity, and the Exaggerated Death of Lament

Building on ethnographic fieldwork and extensive historical evidence, Crying Shame analyzes lament across thousands of years and nearly every continent.

• Explores the enduring power of lament: expressing grief through crying songs, often in a collective ritual context
• Draws on the author’s extensive ethnographic fieldwork, and unique long-term engagement and participation in the phenomenon
• Offers a startling new perspective on the nature of modernity and postmodernity
• An important addition to growing literature on cultural globalization