Best of
Social-Science

1992

Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism


Derrick A. Bell - 1992
    These essays shed light on some of the most perplexing and vexing issues of our day: affirmative action, the disparity between civil rights law and reality, the “racist outbursts” of some black leaders, the temptation toward violent retaliation, and much more.

Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Impacts)


Paulo Freire - 1992
    Pedagogy of Hope represents a chronicle and synthesis of the ongoing social struggles of Latin America and the Third World since the landmark publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Here, Freire once again explores his best-known analytical themes--with even deeper understanding and a greater wisdom. Certainly, all of these themes have to be analyzed as elements of a body of critical, liberationist pedagogy. In this book, we come to understand the author's pedagogical thinking even better, through the critical seriousness, humanistic objectivity, and engaged subjectivity which, in all of Freire's books, are always wedded to a unique creative innovativeness. Pedagogy of Hope is a testimonial to the inner vitality of generations that have not prospered, and to the often silent, generous strength of millions who refuse to let hope be extinguished: people throughout the world who have been empowered by Pedagogy of the Oppressed and all of Paulo Freire's writings.

From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society


Fei Xiaotong - 1992
    Written in Chinese from a Chinese point of view for a Chinese audience, From the Soil describes the contrasting organizational principles of Chinese and Western societies, thereby conveying the essential features of both. Fei shows how these unique features reflect and are reflected in the moral and ethical characters of people in these societies. This profound, challenging book is both succinct and accessible. In its first complete English-language edition, it is likely to have a wide impact on Western social theorists.Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng's translation captures Fei's jargonless, straightforward style of writing. Their introduction describes Fei's education and career as a sociologist, the fate of his writings on and off the Mainland, and the sociological significance of his analysis. The translators' epilogue highlights the social reforms for China that Fei drew from his analysis and advocated in a companion text written in the same period.

Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil


Nancy Scheper-Hughes - 1992
    Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage. It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing – and controversial – is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.

Race: How Blacks And Whites Think And Feel About The American Obsession


Studs Terkel - 1992
    In a rare and revealing look at how people in America truly feel about race, Terkel brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and white, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till's mother are among those whose voices appear in Race. In all, nearly one hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: feelings about affirmative action, gentrification, secret prejudices, and dashed hopes.

Political Ideologies: An Introduction


Andrew Heywood - 1992
    This substantially revised 3rd edition of this text on political ideologies takes full account of the impact of the post Cold War world order, the challenge of postmodernism, the advance of globalization and the advent of global terrorism, and includes additional coverage of the prospects for ideologies in the 21st century.

An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology


Pierre Bourdieu - 1992
    Yet, despite the influence of his work, no single introduction to his wide-ranging oeuvre is available. This book, intended for an English-speaking audience, offers a systematic and accessible overview, providing interpretive keys to the internal logic of Bourdieu's work by explicating thematic and methodological principles underlying his work. The structure of Bourdieu's theory of knowledge, practice, and society is first dissected by Loic Wacquant; he then collaborates with Bourdieu in a dialogue in which they discuss central concepts of Bourdieu's work, confront the main objections and criticisms his work has met, and outline Bourdieu's views of the relation of sociology to philosophy, economics, history, and politics. The final section captures Bourdieu in action in the seminar room as he addresses the topic of how to practice the craft of reflexive sociology. Throughout, they stress Bourdieu's emphasis on reflexivity—his inclusion of a theory of intellectual practice as an integral component of a theory of society—and on method—particularly his manner of posing problems that permits a transfer of knowledge from one area of inquiry into another. Amplified by notes and an extensive bibliography, this synthetic view is essential reading for both students and advanced scholars.

Extraordinary Relationships: A New Way of Thinking about Human Interactions


Roberta M. Gilbert - 1992
    Kerr, M.D., Director, Georgetown Family Center, Washington, D.C. and coauthor with Dr. Murray Bowen of Family Evaluation After food, water, and shelter, relationships are the most important factors in determining your quality of life. At work, productivity and efficiency depend on relationships. At home, relationships with your spouse, children, and friends are keys to success and happiness. And among nations, relationships start and stop wars. This invaluable guide shows that only by further developing yourself can you further develop your relationships. Based on the innovative family systems theory pioneered by the late Dr. Murray Bowen, this important and penetrating book offers practical and authoritative family therapy advice that has helped thousands of people throughout the last three decades. It's a blueprint to better relationships that tells how the principles of family systems theory can be used in all arenas of your life, including intimate relationships, friendships, family relationships, single life, workplace relationships, international relationships, and your relationship with yourself. "A perfect and unpretentious primer of family relationships . a relief to read." --Dr. Walter Toman, Professor Emeritus, Erlangen-Nurnberg University, Germany, and author of Family Constellation

Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality


Toni Morrison - 1992
    Yet even as the televised proceedings shocked and galvanized viewers not only in this country but the world over, they cast a long shadow on essential issues that define America.In Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, Toni Morrison contributes an introduction and brings together eighteen provocative essays, all but one written especially for this book, by prominent and distinguished academicians—black and white, male and female. These writings powerfully elucidate not only the racial and sexual but also the historical, political, cultural, legal, psychological, and linguistic aspects of a signal and revelatory moment in American history.With contributions by:Homi K. Bhabha, Margaret A. Burnham, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Paula Giddings, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Claudia Brodsky Lacour, Wahneema Lubiano, Manning Marable, Nellie Y. McKay, Toni Morrison, Nell Irvin Painter, Gayle Pemberton, Andrew Ross, Christine Stansell, Carol M. Swain, Michael Thelwell, Kendall Thomas, Cornel West, Patricia J. Williams

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics


Jane Jacobs - 1992
    The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, overextended government farm subsidies and zealous transit police, to show what happens when the moral systems of commerce collide with those of politics.

The Lysander Spooner Reader


Lysander Spooner - 1992
    This selection includes "Vices Are Not Crimes," "Natural Law," "Trial by Jury," "No Treason, the Constitution of No Authority," "Letter to Thomas Bayard," and Benjamin Tucker's eulogy.

Tears of Blood: A Cry For Tibet


Mary A. Craig - 1992
    Many thousands more, including their spiritual and political leader, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, have been driven into exile.The country has been systematically colonized, so that indigenous inhabitants are now a second-class minority. Not only are Tibetans being squeezed out by Chinese settlers, but there are reports of Tibetan women being forcibly sterilized and of healthy full-term babies being killed at birth. Thousands of Tibetans languish in prison and suffer appalling torture. Rich mineral resources have been plundered and the delicate ecosystem devastated. Buddhism, the life blood of Tibet, has been ruthlessly suppressed.Mary Craig tells the story of Tibet with candor and power. Based upon extensive research and interviews with large numbers of refugees now living in exile in India, this book presents four decades of religious persecution, environmental devastation, and human atrocities that have caused Tibetans to weep "tears of blood."

Home Fires


Donald R. Katz - 1992
    Spanning nearly five decades, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, their story has the scope, depth, wealth of incident, and emotional intensity of a great novel, and an abundance of humor, scandal, warmth, and trauma. A masterful chronicle of the turbulent postwar era, illuminating the interplay between private life and profound cultural changes.Donald Katz begins his account in 1945, when Sam Gordon comes home from the war to his young wife, and two-year-old daughter, eager to move his family into the growing middle class. After a few years in the Bronx, Sam and Eve move to a new Long Island subdivision and have two more children. As the '50s yield to the '60s, the younger Gordons fly out into the culture like shrapnel from an artillery shell, each tracing a unique trajectory.Katz tells the Gordons' story-the unraveling of Sam's and Eve's American dream, to the slow, hopeful reknitting of the family-marshaling a vivid cast of supporting characters. Deftly juxtaposing day-to-day family life with landmark public events, Katz creates a rich and revealing portrait of the second half of 20th century America.

The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary (Penguin Reference)


Rosalind Fergusson - 1992
    Clearly arranged and easy to use, it offers an astonishing wide range of suggestions for rhyming words, from the common and everyday to the more difficult and obscure.

Abnormal Psychology


Ronald J. Comer - 1992
    It is that firsthand knowledge of the concerns of students, the complexities of the disorders, and the real struggles of people with psychological disorders that makes Comer's text, Abnormal Psychology, so compelling. This Sixth Edition's new content and features, coupled with new study and teaching tools, all serve to keep the book's portrait of contemporary abnormal psychology as fresh and insightful as ever.

Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex


Carol Tavris - 1992
    In this enlightening book, Carol Tavris unmasks the widespread but invisible custom -- pervasive in the social sciences, medicine, law, and history -- of treating men as the normal standard, women as abnormal. Tavris expands our vision of normalcy by illuminating the similarities between women and men and showing that the real differences lie not in gender, but in power, resources, and life experiences. Winner of the American Association for Applied and Preventive Psychology's Distinguished Media Contribution Award

A Mouthful of Air: Languages and Language, Especially English


Anthony Burgess - 1992
    Anthony Burgess covers everything from Shakespeare's pronunciation, to the politics of speech, to the place of English in the world, and more.

Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade


Rickie Solinger - 1992
    Such initiatives encouraged white women to relinquish their babies, spawning a flourishing adoption market, while they subjected black women to social welfare policies which assumed they would keep their babies and aimed to prevent them from having more.

The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics


Greg Mitchell - 1992
    Amazingly, Sinclair swept the Democratic primary, leading a mass movement called EPIC (End Poverty in California). More than a thousand EPIC chapters formed, much like Occupy Wall Street sites popped up in 2011.Alarmed, Sinclair’s opponents launched an unprecedented public relations blitzkrieg to discredit him. The result was nothing less than a revolution in American politics, and with it, the era of the “spin doctor” was born. The iconic Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg created the first "attack ads" for the screen, the precursor of today's TV travesties. Hollywood took its first all-out plunge into politics and money started to play the tune in our political process.In a riveting, blow-by-blow narrative featuring the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Louis B. Mayer, H. L. Mencken, William Randolph Hearst, Will Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, and a Who's Who of political, literary and entertainment stars, Greg Mitchell brings to life the outrageous campaign that forever transformed the electoral process.A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, it served as the basis for one episode in the award-winning PBS documentary "The Great Depression"

Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity


Néstor García Canclini - 1992
    This now-classic work features a new introduction in which Nestor Garcia Canclini calls for a cultural politics to contain the damaging effects of globalization and responds to relevant theoretical developments over the past decade.Garcia Canclini questions whether Latin America can compete in a global marketplace without losing its cultural identity. He moves with ease from the ideas of Gramsci and Foucault to economic analysis, from appraisals of the exchanges between Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges to Chicano film and grafitti. Hybrid Cultures at once clarifies the development of democratic institutions in Latin America and reveals that the most destructive ideological trends are still going strong.

Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotes of Dissatisfaction, Mischief, and Revenge


Martin Sprouse - 1992
    Many of the stories would be funny if their causes hadn't been fed by such discontent. And lest you think this is unique or endemic to late-20th-century America, there are scores of historical quotations and anecdotes.

Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity


David Campbell - 1992
    In this new edition of a groundbreaking work -- one of the first to bring critical theory into dialogue with more traditional approaches to international relations -- David Campbell provides a fundamental reappraisal of American foreign policy, with a new epilogue to address current world affairs and the burgeoning focus on culture and identity in the study of international relations.Extending recent debates in international relations, Campbell shows how perceptions of danger and difference work to establish the identity of the United States. He demonstrates how foreign policy, far from being an expression of a given society, constitutes state identity through the interpretation of danger posed by others.

نقد الحداثة


Alain Touraine - 1992
    Yet as we approach the end of the millenium, we find the concept under seige: constantly being challenged, rejected or refined. In " Critique of Modernity, Alain Touraine, one of our leading social thinkers, offers an outstanding analysis and reinterpretation of the modern for the twenty-first century.

Talking Politics


William A. Gamson - 1992
    Yet social movements, comprised by and large of average citizens who have become exercised about particular issues, have been a prominent feature of the American political scene throughout American history and they are experiencing a resurgence in recent years. William Gamson asks the question, how is it that so many people become active in movements if people are so generally uninterested and badly informed about issues? The conclusion he reaches in this book is a striking refutation of the common wisdom about the public's ability to reason about politics. Rather than relying on survey data, as so many studies of public opinion do, Gamson reports on his analysis of discussions among small groups of working-class people on four controversial issues: affirmative action, nuclear power, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the troubles in American industry. Excerpts from many of these discussions are transcribed in the book. Gamson analyzes how these same issues have been treated in a range of media material, from editorial opinion columns to political cartoons and network news programs, in order to determine how closely the group discussions mimic media discourse. He finds that the process of opinion formation is more complex than it has usually been depicted and that people condition media information with reflection on their own experience or that of people they know. The discussions transcribed in this book demonstrate that people are quite capable of conducting informed and well-reasoned discussions about issues and that although most people are not inclined to become actively involved in politics, the seeds of political action are present in the minds of many. With the appropriate stimulation, this latent political consciousness can be activated, which accounts for the continual creation of social movements.

Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market


Thomas Szasz - 1992
    By the end of World War I, however, the free market in drugs was but a dim memory, if that. Instead of dwelling on the familiar impracticality or unfairness of our drug laws, Szasz demonstrates the deleterious effects of prescription laws which place people under lifelong medical tutelage. The result is that most Americans today prefer a coercive and corrupt command drug economy to a free market in drugs.Throughout the book, Szasz stresses the consequences of the fateful transformation of the central aim of American drug prohibitions from protecting us from being fooled by misbranded drugs to protecting us from harming ourselves by self-medication--defined as drug abuse. And he reminds us that the choice between self-control and state coercion applies to all areas of our lives, drugs being but one of the theaters in which this perennial play may be staged. A free society, Szasz emphasizes, cannot endure if its citizens reject the values of self-discipline and personal responsibility and if the state treats adults as if they were naughty children. In a no-holds-barred examination of the implementation of the War on Drugs, Szasz shows that under the guise of protecting the vulnerable members of our society--especially children, blacks, and the sick--our government has persecuted and injured them. Leading politicians persuade parents to denounce their children, and encourage children to betray their parents and friends--behavior that subverts family loyalties and destroys basic human decency. And instead of protecting blacks and Hispanics from dangerous drugs, this holy war has allowed us to persecute them, not as racists but as therapists--working selflessly to bring about a drug-free America. Last but not least, to millions of sick Americans, the War on Drugs has meant being deprived of the medicines they want-- because the drugs are illegal, unapproved here though approved abroad, or require a prescription a physician may be afraid to provide. The bizarre upshot of our drug policy is that many Americans now believe they have a right to die, which they will do anyway, while few believe they have a right to drugs, even though that does not mean they have to take any. Often jolting, always stimulating, Our Right to Drugs is likely to have the same explosive effect on our ideas about drugs and drug laws as, more than thirty years ago, The Myth of Mental Illness had on our ideas about insanity and psychiatry.

Masculine and Feminine: The Natural Flow of Opposites in the Psyche


Gareth S. Hill - 1992
    A Jungian analyst provides a new model for understanding the masculine and feminine principles that exist in everyone, providing insight into the events of daily life and the themes of entire lifetimes.

From Archetype to Zeitgeist: Powerful Ideas for Powerful Thinking


Herbert R. Kohl - 1992
    Organized by topic, each word is explained in a comprehensive yet concise definition, with a pronunciation guide and derivation added for easy reference. The book includes definitions of more than 150 words, from baroque to expressionism, iconography to pointillism, and archetype to zeitgeist.

Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism 1940-1990


Michael McClintock - 1992
    

Hidden People: How a Remote New Guinea Culture Was Brought Back from the Brink of Extinction


Lynette Oates - 1992
    

The Evil Eye: A Casebook


Alan Dundes - 1992
    The evil eye—the power to inflict illness, damage to property, or even death simply by gazing at or praising someone—is among the most pervasive and powerful folk beliefs in the Indo-European and Semitic world.  It is also one of the oldest, judging from its appearance in the Bible and in Sumerian texts five thousand years old.  Remnants of the superstition persist today when we drink toasts, tip waiters, and bless sneezers.  To avert the evil eye, Muslim women wear veils, baseball players avoid mentioning a no-hitter in progress, and traditional Jews say their business or health is "not bad" (rather than "good").    Though by no means universal, the evil eye continues to be a major factor in the behavior of millions of people living in the Mediterranean and Arab countries, as well as among immigrants to the Americas.  This widespread superstition has attracted the attention of many scholars, and the twenty-one essays gathered in this book represent research from diverse perspectives:  anthropology, classics, folklore studies, ophthalmology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, sociology, and religious studies.  Some essays are fascinating reports of beliefs about the evil eye, from India and Iran to Scotland and Slovak-American communities; others analyze the origin, function, and cultural significance of this folk belief from ancient times to the present day.  Editor Alan Dundes concludes the volume by proffering a comprehensive theoretical explanation of the evil eye.     Anyone who has ever knocked on wood to ward off misfortune will enjoy this generous sampling of evil eye scholarship, and may never see the world through the same eyes again.

Rethinking The Family: Some Feminist Questions


Barrie Thorne - 1992
    Situated in the context of what is often referred to as the "family crisis," the essays address issues such as the increase in divorce, employment of married women and mothers, the relationship of poverty to family structure, controversy over access to abortion, the increasing visibility of varied family forms, and debates over the very meaning of "family."

Archaeology: The Science of Once and Future Things


Brian Hayden - 1992
    In archaeology he sets out a broad overview of the subject emphasizing the most interesting problems and conclusions. His approach is to shows how the world works from an archaeological perspective. He teaches students how to develop the conceptual tools of archaeology, how to examine the many specific eras in prehistory and sites to demonstrate how archaeologists draw conclusions, find answers and interpret the findings in their fieldwork. He believes this will stimulate their interest and provide the springboard for further study. archaeology is a gentle introduction to the often intimidating topics of science and theory, which are both approachable and enjoyable.

The Visible Poor: Homelessness in the United States


Joel M. Blau - 1992
    He argues that current government policies at every level are mired in pointless headcounting and quick-fix solutions that don't deal with the underlying causes.

A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581-1990


James Forsyth - 1992
    It covers from the early history of Siberia after the Russian conquest to collectivization and conscription during World War II and to the 1980s movement ror native rights. In this, the first substantive post-Glasnost account to appear, James Forsyth compares the Siberian experience with that of Indians and Eskimos in North America.

Political Writings


Max Weber - 1992
    The texts in this edition span his career and include his early inaugural lecture The Nation State and Economic Policy, Suffrage and Democracy in Germany, Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order, Socialism, The Profession and Vocation of Politics, and an excerpt from his essay The Situation of Constitutional Democracy in Russia, as well as other shorter writings. Together they illustrate the development of his thinking on the fate of Germany and the nature of politics in the modern western state in an age of cultural 'disenchantment'. The introduction discusses the central themes of Weber's political thought, and a chronology, notes and an annotated bibliography place him in his political and intellectual context.

Feminist Methods in Social Research


Shulamit Reinharz - 1992
    Her goal is to help explain the relationship between feminism and methodology and to challenge stereotypes that might exist about 'feminist research methods'. Reinharz concludes that there is no one feminist method, but rather a variety of perspectives or questions that feminists bring to traditional methods. She argues that this diversity of methods has been of great value to feminist scholarship. She also includes an extensive bibliography which catalogues feminist scholarship over the last two decades. There are a few edited volumes on the subject but currently no authored text.

Are You Politically Correct?


Michael E. Bauman - 1992
    Policies governing what is taught in America's colleges and universities, who is admitted, and how faculty are hired (for years viewed as standards of excellence) are now being replaced by standards aimed at "multicultural diversity." Traditional standards are criticized as inherently racist, sexist, and oppressive, while the new perspective is said to be "politically correct." Today, important questions are being raised:- Should the study of Western culture be replaced by "multiculturalism"?- Is affirmative action inherently racist?- Should accrediting bodies require a commitment to diversity?- What is political correctness?- Should the traditional canon of the great works of Western literature be replaced, amended, or remain the same?- Do minority study programs really benefit the people they are supposed to help?- Are "speech codes" on college campuses inconsistent with the First Amendment?Are You Politically Correct? brings together selections that span the political gamut from the far left to the far right, demonstrating the clash of views on the many issues surrounding the political correctness debate.

Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-Centered Handbook


Richard Bauman - 1992
    Cross-references within each individual entry facilitate exploration within the volume, while bibliographies appended to each entry direct the reader to related literature. Covering basic concepts, analyticalperspectives, communicative media, expressive genres, and complex performance events, this concise yet comprehensive book is a handy reference for those interested in folklore and its growing role in drama, anthropology, and cultural studies.

The Philosophy Of The Visual Arts


Philip A. Alperson - 1992
    This text stresses conceptual andtheoretical issues, first examining the very notion of the visual arts and then investigating philosophical questions raised by various forms, from painting, the paradigmatic form, to sculpture, photography, film, dance, kitsch, and other forms on the borders of the visual arts. The selectionsrepresent both classical and contemporary views and include sections by artists, art historians, and critics as well as philosophers. A singularly important text for courses in the philosophy of arts or aesthetics, this anthology is designed to enrich the philosophical and critical examination ofour beliefs about the visual arts.

Depression: The Evolution of Powerlessness


Paul A. Gilbert - 1992
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Open Marxism, Volume 2: Theory and Practice


Werner Bonefeld - 1992
    Topics covered include Marxism and political economy, historical materialism, dialectics, state theory, class, fetishism and the periodisation of capitalist development.