Best of
Sociology

1988

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media


Edward S. Herman - 1988
    Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.

The Measure of a Man


Martin Luther King Jr. - 1988
    Martin Luther King, Jr. defining humanity's worth and completion relate to strides toward social justice.Eloquent and passionate, reasoned and sensitive, this pair of meditations by the revered civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. contains the theological roots of his political and social philosophy of nonviolent activism.In supporting reconciliation, Dr. King outlines human worth based on Scripture, encouraging the reader to know each person has worth, rational ability, and an invitation to fellowship with the Creator. In addition, Dr. King explains the three dimensions of life: length, breadth, and height; they must all be present and working harmoniously in order for life to be complete as an individual and as a community. Black and white photos from Dr. King's life along with simple prayers from the reverend round out this short but poignant offering.

I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism


Lee Maracle - 1988
    A revised edition of Lee Maracle's visionary book which links teaching of her First Nations heritage with feminism.

Collapse of Complex Societies


Joseph A. Tainter - 1988
    The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses.

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle


Guy Debord - 1988
    This is a seminal text in cultural theory and an essential pocket handbook for situationists wherever they may be.

The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition


Arthur Kleinman - 1988
    But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones. It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring.Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.

Hearing God


Peter M. Lord - 1988
    Here is an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to two-way communication with God.

Ideology: An Introduction


Terry Eagleton - 1988
    From the left it can often be seen as the exclusive property of ruling classes, and from the right as an arid and totalizing exception to their own common sense. For some, the concept now seems too ubiquitous to be meaningful; for others, too cohesive for a world of infinite difference. Here, in a book written for both newcomers to the topic and those already familiar with the debate, Terry Eagleton unravels the many different definitions of ideology, and explores the concept’s tortuous history from the Enlightenment to postmodernism.Ideology provides lucid interpretations of the thought of key Marxist thinkers and of others such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud and the various poststructuralists. As well as clarifying a notoriously confused topic, this new work by one of our most important contemporary critics is a controversial political intervention into current theoretical debates. It will be essential reading for students and teachers of literature and politics.

Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America


John D'Emilio - 1988
    D'Emilio & Freedman give a deeper understanding of how sexuality has dramatically influenced politics & culture throughout history. "The book John D'Emilio co-wrote with Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters, was cited by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy when, writing for a majority of court on July 26, he and his colleagues struck down a Texas law criminalizing sodomy. The decision was widely hailed as a victory for gay rights—& it derived in part, according to Kennedy's written comments, from the information he gleaned from D'Emilio's book, which traces the history of American perspectives on sexual relationships from the nation's founding thru the present day. The justice mentioned Intimate Matters specifically in the court's decision."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune "Fascinating...[they] marshall their material to chart a gradual but decisive shift in the way Americans have understood sex & its meaning in their lives."—Barbara Ehrenreich, NY Times Book Review "With comprehensiveness & care...D'Emilio & Freedman have surveyed the sexual patterns for an entire nation across four centuries."—Martin Bauml Duberman, Nation "Intimate Matters is comprehensive, meticulous & intelligent."—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World "This book is remarkable...bound to become the definitive survey of American sexual history for years to come."—Roy Porter, Journal of the History of the Behavioral SciencesAcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe reproductive matrix, 1600-1800Divided passions, 1780-1900 Toward a new sexual order, 1880-1930 The rise & fall of sexual liberalism, 1920 to the presentNotesSelected BibliographyIndex

Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education


Neil Postman - 1988
    Readers will find themselves rethinking many of their bedrock assumptions: Should education transmit culture or defend us against it? Is technological innovation progress or a peculiarly American addiction? When everyone watches the same television programs -- and television producers don't discriminate between the audiences for Sesame Street and Dynasty -- is childhood anything more than a sentimental concept? Writing in the traditions of Orwell and H.L. Mencken, Neil Postman sends shock waves of wit and critical intelligence through the cultural wasteland.

The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America


Robert A. Nisbet - 1988
    Nisbet criticizes Americans for isolationism at home, discusses the gutting of educational standards, the decay of education, the presence of government in all facets of life, the diminished connection to community, and the prominence of economic arrangements driving everyday life in America. This work is deeply indebted to the analyses of Tocqueville and Bryce regarding the threats that bureaucracy, centralization, and creeping conformity pose to liberty and individual independence in the western world. The Present Age relates a tragedy—the unprecedented militarization of American life in the decades after 1914, as the result of the necessary resistance to National Socialist and Communist totalitarianism that fed into and reinforced the profound tendencies toward centralization within modern society. Robert Nisbet (1913–1996), former professor of sociology at Columbia University, is the author of Sociology as an Art Form; The Social Philosophers; Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary; The Sociological Tradition; History of the Idea of Progress; and Twilight of Authority, also published by Liberty Fund.

Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood


George Grant - 1988
    Discussed are the legal precedents, court decisions, educational initiatives, political machinations, cultural ramifications, sociological consequences, and theological implications.

Attitudes, Personality, and Behavior


Icek Ajzen - 1988
    

Another Chance: Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Family


Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse - 1988
    The first ten chapters of Another Chance pull the curtain back on the alcoholic family. We meet its cast of characters: the Dependent, the Enabler, the Hero, the Scapegoat, the Lost Child, the Mascot. The author then spells out a treatment plan for halting the downward spital of alcoholism -- a powerful blend of the Twelve Steps pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous, the Family Reconstruction process developed by Virginia Satir, Wegscheider-Cruse's innovative and eclectic approach to therapy, and her own recovery from co-dependency. The second edition also addresses adult children of alcoholics, sprituality, and co-dependent therapists.

Signal : communication tools for the information age, a Whole Earth catalog


Kevin Kelly - 1988
    

Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984


Michel Foucault - 1988
    Drawing upon his revolutionary concept of power as well as his critique of the institutions that organize social life, Foucault discusses literature, music, and the power of art while also examining concrete issues such as the Left in contemporary France, the social security system, the penal system, homosexuality, madness, and the Iranian Revolution.

The Construction of Homosexuality


David F. Greenberg - 1988
    David F. Greenberg's careful, encyclopedic and important new book argues that homosexuality is only deviant because society has constructed, or defined, it as deviant. The book takes us over vast terrains of example and detail in the history of homosexuality."—Nicholas B. Dirks, New York Times Book Review

The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor


Andrew Abbott - 1988
    Through comparative and historical study of the professions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England, France, and America, Abbott builds a general theory of how and why professionals evolve.

The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II


Robert Wuthnow - 1988
    . . . To carry on debates about this structure now without reference to Wuthnow would be to attempt to track a landscape of near-chaos without using the best available road map and set of markers. It is likely that we will be citing "Wuthnow' as we have been referring eponymically to major interpretations of "Herberg' or "Berger' or "Bellah.'" --Martin Marty, Religious Studies Review "This book is the most significant interpretation of recent American religious history available". --John M. Mulder, Theology Today "An extremely penetrating, nuanced, and largely convincing account of what is really happening to American religion--an account worthy of comparison with, say, Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew, or H. Richard Niebuhr's The Social Sources of Denominationalism, although Wuthnow's argument ultimately supersedes both". --Wilfred M. McClay, Commentary

Political and Social Writings


Cornelius Castoriadis - 1988
    Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The books offered through Minnesota Archive Editions are produced in limited quantities according to customer demand and are available through select distribution partners.

The Path of Compassion: Writing on Socially Engaged Buddhism


Fred Eppsteiner - 1988
    collected essays

Vietnam Wives: Facing the Challenges of Life with Veterans Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress


Aphrodite Matsakis - 1988
    Even twenty-five years after the end of the war, in many families life is still neither easy nor reliable, and the rules continue to change. The recent anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam has focused attention on the long-term effects of the combat experience. In Vietnam Wives: Facing the Challenges of Life with Veterans Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress, Aphrodite Matsakis revisits the plight of the secondary victims of the war: the wives and children of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The book explores the many changes encountered by traumatized veterans and their families as they face the difficult developmental stage of mid-life: retirement, the "empty nest syndrome," becoming grandparents, and, in many cases, separation and divorce. Matsakis deftly leads readers through the process of finding better ways to cope with new challenges and old. She explains post-traumatic stress disorder, its causes, symptoms, and the devastating long-term effects, including domestic violence, substance abuse, and suicidal feelings. To illustrate both problems and solutions, Dr. Matsakis extensively uses interviews with wives of Vietnam veterans who have lived through a variety of experiences. Intended primarily for wives of veterans, but of great interest to their extended families and close friends as well, this book provides compassion and support while pointing the way to recovery from post-traumatic stress.

Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory


Margaret Scotford Archer - 1988
    Described as a timely and sophisticated treatment, the book showed that the problems of culture and agency and structure and agency could be solved using the same analytical framework. The revised edition contextualizes the argument in 1990s sociology and links it to Professor Archer's latest book, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (CUP, 1995).

Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers


Daniel F. Chambliss - 1988
    

Scarlet Woman of Wall Street


John Steele Gordon - 1988
    

Jesus and Marx: From Gospel to Ideology


Jacques Ellul - 1988
    

Both Right and Left Handed: Arab Women Talk about Their Lives


Bouthaina Shaaban - 1988
    Bouthaina Shaaban has written a new introduction describing the changes, setbacks and successes in the intervening decades since the book's first publication.

Caste and Class in a Southern Town


John Dollard - 1988
    Now fifty years after its original publication, John Dollard’s most famous work offers timeless insights and remains essential to those interested in race-related social issues.In 1937, W. E. B. Du Bois observed, "Dr. Dollard’s study is one of the most interesting and penetrating that has been made concerning the South and is marked by courage and real insight. . . . Dr. Dollard’s book marks a distinct advance in the study of the Southern scene."

Political and Social Writings: 1946-55 - From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of Socialism v. 1


Cornelius Castoriadis - 1988
    Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. A series of writings by the man who inspired the students of the Workers' Rebellion in May of 1968. "Given the rapid pace of change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the radical nature of these transformations, the work of Cornelius Castoriadis, a consistent and radical critic of Soviet Marxism, gains renewed significance. . . . these volumes are instructive because they enable us to trace his rigorous engagement with the project of socialist construction from his break with Trotskyism to his final breach with Marxism . . . and would be read with profit by all those seeking to comprehend the historical originality of events in the USSR and Eastern Europe." –Contemporary Sociology

Peasant Economics: Farm Households in Agrarian Development


Frank Ellis - 1988
    The second edition retains the same building blocks designed to explore household decision-making in a social context. Key topics are efficiency, risk, time allocation, gender, agrarian contracts, farm size and technological change. For these and other topics, household economic behavior represents the outcome of social interactions within the household, and market interactions outside the household. A new chapter on the environment combines exposition of economic tools not previously covered in the book with examination of household and community decision-making in relation to environmental resources.

Machiavellian Intelligence


Richard W. Byrne - 1988
    Instead of placing top priority on the role of tools, the pressure for their skillful use, and the related importance of interpersonal communication as a means for enhanced cooperation, this volume explores quite a different idea-- that the driving force in the evolution of human intellect was social expertise--a force which enabled the manipulation of others within the social group, who themselves are seen as posing the most challenging problems faced by primitive humans. The need to outwit one's clever colleagues then produces an evolutionary spiraling of "Machiavellian intelligence." The book forms a complete and self-contained text on this fast-growing topic. It includes the origins of the basic premise and a wealth of exciting developments, described by an international team of authors from the fields of anthropology, psychology, and zoology. An evaluation of more traditional approaches is also undertaken, with a view to discovering to what extent Machiavellian intelligence represents a complementary concept or one that is truly an alternative. Readers and students will find this fascinating volume carries them to the frontiers of scientific work on the origin of human intellect.

Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers


Robert Jackall - 1988
     Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. Jackall reveals a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might. Cheerfully-bland public faces mask intense competition in this world where people hide their intentions, and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional truths. Moral questions become merely practical concerns and issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managers find themselves wondering how to act in such a world and still maintain a sense of personal integrity. This brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality presents compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the businesses of America. It will interest anyone concerned with how big organizations actually function, or with the current moral malaise in our public life.

Feminism and Foucault: Violence, Poverty, and Prostitution


Irene Diamond - 1988
    This book fosters an unprecedented dialogue between Foucault and the fertile ground of contemporary feminism and explores the many ways these disparate approaches to cultural analysis converge and interact.

Harmony in Conflict


Richard W. Hartzell - 1988
    Hartzell

Primary Understanding: Education in Early Childhood


Kieran Egan - 1988
    Has the education of young children become too rationalized? - Kieran Egan responded to this idea by taking a new approach to early childhood teaching from which he has formulated a theory of education which incorporates the idea of cultural sense-making capacities and oral tradition.

The Invisible Web: Gender Patterns in Family Relationships


Marianne Walters - 1988
    Using the lens of gender, connections between mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, and husbands and wives are analyzed and given new meaning. The authors evaluate and redefine family transitions such as divorce, single-parent and female-headed households, and remarried couples who are attempting to integrate their respective children with ex-spouses and complicated networks of extended kin. They also reexamine traditional and emerging roles for women in their early, middle, and later years. Written in an engaging format, each chapter features an in depth analysis of how gender shapes the relationship in question. This discussion is followed by fascinating vignettes of actual cases from each of the four authors, whose approaches reflect different orientations to therapy.Based on the work of the Women's Project in Family Therapy which won the 1986 AFTA Award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy, this groundbreaking work is an excellent text for courses in family therapy and women's studies, an invaluable guide for mental health practitioners, and an insightful read for anyone who wishes to explore the invisible web of gender patterns in families.

Politics Against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power


Gøsta Esping-Andersen - 1988
    Combining quantitative analysis and historical case studies to demonstrate the electoral effects of party policy, Gosta Esping-Andersen formulates a theory that is applicable not only to Scandinavia but to Western Europe as a whole. In addition, he explains why the support basis of social democracy has deteriorated so much more in Denmark than in Sweden and Norway.Originally published in 1985.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Signal Detection Theory And Psychophysics


David Marvin Green - 1988
    The theory provides a way to analyze what had been called the threshold or sensory limen, the basic unit of all discrimination studies, whether human or animal. The book outlines the theory of statisical decision making and its application to a variety of common psychophysical processes. It shows how signal detection theory can be used to separate sensory and decision aspects of responses in dicrimination. The concepts of the ideal observer and energy detector are presented and compared with human auditory detection data. Signal detection theory is appliced to a variety of other substanditive problemsin sensory psychology. Signal Detection Theory and Psychology is an invaluable book for psychologists dealing with sensory perception, especailly auditory, for psychologists studying discrimination in other cognitivie processes, and for human factor engineers dealing with man/machine interfaces.

The Great Divide


Studs Terkel - 1988
    Studs Terkel talks to 100 Americans, from housewives and bartenders to teachers and cops. What they have to say presents a candid portrait of a nation divided. A hardcover bestseller. HC: Pantheon.

The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture


Ted Gioia - 1988
    He argues that because improvisation--the essence of jazz--must often fail under the pressure of on-the-spot creativity, we should view jazz as an imperfect art and base our judgments of it on an aesthetics of imperfection.Incorporating the thought of such seminal thinkers as Walter Benjamin, Jos� Ortega y Gasset, and Roland Barthes, The Imperfect Art offers vivid portraits of the giants of jazz and startling insights into this vital musical form and the interaction of society and art.

Jews in the Greek Age


Elias Joseph Bickerman - 1988
    It is a rich story of Jewish social, economic, and intellectual life and of the relations between the Jewish community and the Hellenistic rulers and colonizers of Palestine--a historical narrative told with consummate skill.Elias Bickerman portrays Jewish life in the context of a broader picture of the Near East and traces the interaction between the Jewish and Greek worlds throughout this period. He reconstructs the evidence concerning social and political structures; the economy of Hellenistic Jerusalem and Judea; Greek officials, merchants, and entrepreneurs as well as full-scale Greek colonies in Palestine; the impact of Greek language and culture among Jews and the translation of Jewish Scriptures into Greek; Jewish literature, learning, and law; and the diaspora in the Hellenistic period. He deploys his profound knowledge gracefully, weaving archaeological finds, literary traditions, the political and economic record, and fertile insights into an abundant and lively history.This first full study of the pre-Maccabean interaction between the Greek and Jewish cultures will be welcomed by historians and specialists in Judaic studies. But any reader interested in the ancient Mediterranean world will find it to be filled with pleasures and discoveries.

The World Of Patience Gromes: Making And Unmaking A Black Community


Scott C. Davis - 1988
    This non-fiction narrative traces the life of Patience Gromes, her family, her neighbours from the War between the States to the War on Poverty. Meet Patience's grandfather who escaped slavery 14 years before the Civil War. Experience the hard years of Reconstruction, the cruelty of De Jure Segregation, the triumph of Civil Rights. Probe the complexities and ironies of neighbourhood life under urban renewal and the War on Poverty.

Making History: The American Left and the American Mind


Richard Flacks - 1988
    Looks at the history of American participation in politic, explains the reasons for public apathy, and assesses the ability of Left to reestablish political influence in the U.S.

Fate and Utopia in German Sociology, 1870--1923


Harry Liebersohn - 1988
    It is an intellectual history of five scholars -- Ferdinand Tonnies, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and Georg Lukacs -- who created modern German sociology over the course of fifty years, from 1870 to 1923.Liebersohn portrays his subjects as thinkers who were deeply immersed in the politics and poetry of their time, and whose sociology benefited in unexpected ways from sources as diverse as medieval mysticism and Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. He maps out their shared sociological discourse, shaped in response to the fragmentation they perceived in public life, in education and the arts, and in Protestant religious life.German sociology has generally been interpreted as having a tragic perspective on modern society (as implied by the pervasive idiom of "fate"); Liebersohn argues that this sense of fate was matched by an underlying utopian hope for an end to fragmentation, rooted for all of his subjects in the Lutheran idea of community.The book's five biographical chapters are structured to discuss ideas of community, society, and personality in the work of the individual discussed, while there is a general movement among the chapters from community to society to socialism. Many specific texts are discussed, and the overall orientation is one of intellectual history rather than sociological analysis.

Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order


Cynthia Fuchs Epstein - 1988
    Epstein addresses basic theoretical, methodological, and epistemological concerns that cut across most sociological specialties.  This book is required reading by every gender sociologist…. It should be read as well by sociologists whose specialty is not gender, and especially by theorists of all stripes…. This is truly the capstone work of a mature scholar.” –Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Social Forces“Deceptive Distinctions really has two agendas.  The first, based on a review of a wide range of scholarship, much of it quite recent, is to argue that men and women are overwhelmingly similar and that any differences between them are socially constructed.  The second is to develop a sociology of knowledge in which the intellectual roots of scholarship on women serve as a case study.  Epstein’s project is not only timely but ambitious as well.” –Naomi Gerstel, Women’s Review of Books“In this sophisticated and incisive critique, Epstein ranges from sociobiology to linguistics and from politics to psychiatry to iterate her position that gender differences are often used to support the existing structure rather than to advance our understanding or expand our horizons.” –Carol C. Nadelson, M.D., American Journal of Psychiatry“Epstein’s informative critique… makes clear [that] the position of women is not an isolated ‘problem’ but the inevitable result of a complex system of power, opportunity, and incentive.  Epstein shows [how] dichotomous thinking still rules our lives.... By bringing together what sociology knows to the contrary, she has helped move society toward a solution.” –Beryl Lieff Benderley, Psychology TodayCo-published with the Russell Sage Foundation.

Scientific Genius: A Psychology Of Science


Dean Keith Simonton - 1988
    Simonton examines the causes and consequences of exceptional productivity: individual differences in lifetime output, the functional relation between age and achievement, the probabilistic connection between quantity and quality, and such issues as the Ortega hypothesis, the Yuasa phenomenon, and Planck's principle. Other factors that he examines are family background, education, role models, marginality, and the zeitgeist. A concluding chapter outlines the broader implications of the theory for the measurement and encouragement of genius in science, and places it in the context of the alternative metasciences - the philosophy, sociology, and psychology of science. Simonton's provocative ideas are a major impetus to true psychology of science and will interest a broad audience.

The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism


Jerry Z. Muller - 1988
    The author explores the interaction of political ideology and academic social science in democratic and totalitarian regimes, the transformation of German conservatism by the experience of National Socialism, and the ways in which tension between former collaborators and former opponents of National Socialism continued to mold West German intellectual life in the postwar decades.

The Thesaurus Of Slang


Esther Lewin - 1988
    By "translating" standard English into slang, this volume offers quick and easy access to expressions gathered from a wide variety of sources, including newspapers, magazines, fiction and nonfiction books, television, radio, trade publications, and casual conversation.

Social Semiotics


Robert Hodge - 1988
    Approaching semiotics as an evolving theory, Hodge and Kress first review the work of theoretical founders, including Saussure, C. S. Peirce, I. Voloshinov, and Freud. They build on the legacy of Voloshinov, who linked semiotics with the study of ideology, and develop the implications of his assertion that the form of signs is determined not only by the social organization of the participants but also by the immediate conditions of their interaction. Showing how such an approach can illuminate key issues is literary theory and communications, the authors analyze messages ranging from literary texts, television, and billboards to social interactions at home and school.

Collected Works: Volume Two


James Connolly - 1988
    

Children of Different Worlds: The Formation of Social Behavior,


Beatrice Whiting - 1988
    The authors and their associates observed children between the ages of two and ten going about their daily lives in communities in Africa, India, the Philippines, Okinawa, Mexico, and the United States. This rich fund of data has enabled them to identify the types of social behavior that are universal and those which differ from one cultural environment to another.Whiting and Edwards shed new light on the nature-nurture question: in analyzing the behavior of young children, they focus on the relative contributions of universal physiological maturation and universal social imperatives. They point out cross-cultural similarities, but also note the differences in experience between children who grow up in simple and in complex societies. They show that knowledge of the company children keep, and of the proportion of time they spend with various categories of people, makes it possible to predict important aspects of their interpersonal behavior.An extension and elaboration of the classic "Children of Six Cultures" (Harvard, 1975), "Children of Different Worlds "will appeal to the same audience developmental psychologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, and educators and is sure to be equally influential."

The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory


Donald Nathan Levine - 1988
    Levine offers a head-on critique of the modern compulsion to flee ambiguity. He centers his analysis on the question of what responses social scientists should adopt in the face of the inexorably ambiguous character of all natural languages. In the course of his argument, Levine presents a fresh reading of works by the classic figures of modern European and American social theory—Durkheim, Freud, Simmel and Weber, and Park, Parsons, and Merton.

Sexuality And Medicine In The Middle Ages


Danielle Jacquart - 1988
    It shows how many of the medical and moral questions that preoccupy us in the twentieth century worried our medieval ancestors as well. Through a detailed analysis of both expert and lay writings, Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset examine the conceptions of sexuality that were created by doctors, by theologians, and by romantic and erotic literature.In the first section of this book, the authors discuss how ideas of physiology, venereal disease, and purity were described, and the influence of anatomical tracts on popular perceptions of the body. The second part charts a history of erotic art, and through this, the differing conceptions of Eastern and Western sexuality. Finally, the authors present a history of the body, analyzing problems of impotence and hysteria and how female sexuality in itself came to be perceived as corrupt and diseased.

Metropolis: From the Division of Labor to Urban Form


Allen J. Scott - 1988
    Allen J. Scott demonstrates how the metropolis emerges out of the basic mechanisms of production and work in contemporary society, and how those mechanisms guide general patterns of urban development. His work will be stimulating to social scientists and to planners and policy makers as well.

Humour in Society: Resistance and Control


Chris Powell - 1988