Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny


Amartya Sen - 2006
    Challenging the reductionist division of people by race, religion, and class, Sen presents an inspiring vision of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiraled in recent years toward brutality and war.

An Introduction to Functional Grammar


M.A.K. Halliday - 1985
    They give greater emphasis to the systemic perspective, in which grammaticalization is understoodin the context of an overall model of language. Their description of grammar is grounded in a comprehensive theory, but it is a theory which evolves in the process of being applied.

An Experiment in Criticism


C.S. Lewis - 1961
    Lewis's classic analysis springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. Crucial to his notion of judging literature is a commitment to laying aside expectations and values extraneous to the work, in order to approach it with an open mind.

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture


Johan Huizinga - 1938
    Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of Homo Ludens, or "Man the player" through Medieval Times, the Renaissance, and into our modern civilization. Huizinga defines play against a rich theoretical background, using cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics. Homo Ludens defines play for generations to come."A happier age than ours once made bold to call our species by the name of Homo Sapiens. In the course of time we have come to realize that we are not so reasonable after all as the Eighteenth Century with its worship of reason and naive optimism, though us; "hence moder fashion inclines to designate our species asHomo Faber Man the Maker. But though faber may not be quite so dubious as sapiens it is, as a name specific of the human being, even less appropriate, seeing that many animals too are makers. There is a third function, howver, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making--namely, playing. it seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature. "--from the Foreward, by Johan Huizinga

Theories of Developmental Psychology


Patricia H. Miller - 1983
    The superb scholarship and thoughtful analyses includes an evaluation of each theory's strengths and weaknesses, as well as excerpts from the theorists' work.

Beyond Culture


Edward T. Hall - 1976
    For too long, people have taken their own ways of life for granted, ignoring the vast, international cultural community that srrounds them. Humankind must now embark on the difficult journey beyond culture, to the discovery of a lost self a sense of perspective. By holding up a mirror, Hall permits us to see the awesome grip of unconscious culture. With concrete examples ranging from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake to the mating habits of the bowerbird of New Guinea, Hall shows us ourselves. Beyond Culture is a book about self-discovery; it is a voyage we all must embark on if mankind is to survive.Fascinating and emotionally challenging. . . . The book's graceful, non-technical style and the many illuminating, real-life illustrations make it a delight to read. --Library JournalHall's book helps us to rethink our values. . . . We come away from it exhilarated. --Ashley MontaguIn this penetrating analysis of the culturally determined yet 'unconscious' attitudes that mold our thought, feeling, communication and behavior. . . . Hall makes explicit taken-for-granted linguistic patterns, body rhythms, personality dynamics, educational goals. . . . Many of Hall's ideas are original and incisive . . . [and] should reward careful readers with new ways of thinking about themselves and others. --Publishers WeeklyA fascintaing book which stands beside The Hidden Dimension and The Silent Language to prove Hall one of the most original anthropologists of our era. --Paul Bohannan

Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity


Ulrich Beck - 1986
    This first English edition has taken its place as a core text of contemporary sociology alongside earlier typifications of society as postindustrial and current debates about the social dimensions of the postmodern.Underpinning the analysis is the notion of the `risk society′. The changing nature of society′s relation to production and distribution is related to the environmental impact as a totalizing, globalizing economy based on scientific and technical knowledge becomes more central to social organization and social conflict.

Race, Class, & Gender: An Anthology


Margaret L. Andersen - 1992
    The author's selection of very accessible articles show how race, class, and gender shape people's experiences, and help students to see the issues in an analytic, as well as descriptive way. The book also provides conceptual grounding in understanding race, class, and gender; has a strong historical and sociological perspective; and is further strengthened by conceptual introductions by the authors.Students will find the readings engaging and accessible, but may gain the most from the introduction sections that highlight key points and relate the essential concepts. Included in the collection of readings are narratives aimed at building empathy, and articles on important social issues such as prison, affirmative action, poverty, immigration, and racism, among other topics.IncludesWhy race, class, and gender still matter by M.L. Andersen and P.H. CollinsMissing people and others, joining together to expand the circle by A. MadridSystems of power and inequality by M.L. Andersen and P.H. CollinsRace and racism, Racism without "racists" by E. Bonilla-SilvaClass and inequality, Growing gulf between rich and the rest of us by H. SklarGender and sexism, Sex and gender through the prism of difference by M.B. Zinn, P. Hondahneu-Sotelo, and M. MessnerEthnicity and nationality, Is this a white country, or what? by L. RubinSexuality and heterosexism, "You talkin' to me?" by J. KilbourneStructure of social institutions by M.L. Andersen and P.H. CollinsWork and economic transformation, Race, class, gender, and women's works by T. Amott and J. MatthaeiFamilies, Our mothers' grief, racial-ethnic women and the maintenance of families by B.T. DillMedia and culture, Racist stereotyping in the English language by R.B. MooreHealth and social welfare, Can education eliminate race, class, and gender inequality? by R.A. Mickelson and S.S. SmithState institutions and violence, First Americans, American Indians by C.M. SnippSocial change and sites of change by M.L. Andersen and P.H. CollinsSites of change, Starbucks paradox by K. FellnerProcesses of change, How the new working class transform urban America by R.D.G. Kelley

The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide To Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job


Karen Kelsky - 2015
     into their ideal job   Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration.   Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success.  They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options.   Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers.   Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including:   -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right  The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

The Feminine Mystique


Betty Friedan - 1963
    Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of “the problem that has no name”: the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women’s confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews as well as insights that continue to inspire. This 50th–anniversary edition features an afterword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen as well as a new introduction by Gail Collins.

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity


Judith Butler - 1989
    This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.

The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind


Simone Weil - 1949
    In 1943, the final year of her life, unable to join the resistance movement in France, she worked in London for the Free French government in exile. Here she was commissioned to outline a plan for the renewal of Europe after the scourge of Nazism. The Need for Roots was the direct result. In it she seized the opportunity to denounce the false values of contemporary civilisation. In the cult of materials she witnessed a devastating loss of spirit and consequently of human values. To counteract this she sets out a radical vision for spiritual and political renewal with a passion for truth which sweeps through these pages. The book has become a lasting spiritual testament for our age, where we are confronted, as T.S. Eliot comments, by a 'genius akin to that of the saints'.

The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change


David Harvey - 1989
    In this new book, David Harvey seeks to determine what is meant by the term in its different contexts and to identify how accurate and useful it is as a description of contemporary experience.But the book is much more than this: in the course of his investigation the author provides a social and semantic history – from the Enlightenment to the present – of modernism and its expression in political and social ideas and movements, as well as in art, literature and architecture. He considers in particular how meaning and perception of time and space themselves vary over time and space, and shows that this variance affects individual values and social processes of the most fundamental kind.This book will be widely welcomed, not only for its clear and critical account of the arguments surrounding the propositions of modernity and postmodernity, but as an incisive contribution to the history of ideas and their relation to social and political change.

Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation


Alexei Yurchak - 2005
    To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of “late socialism” (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.Focusing on the major transformation of the 1950s at the level of discourse, ideology, language, and ritual, Alexei Yurchak traces the emergence of multiple unanticipated meanings, communities, relations, ideals, and pursuits that this transformation subsequently enabled. His historical, anthropological, and linguistic analysis draws on rich ethnographic material from Late Socialism and the post-Soviet period.The model of Soviet socialism that emerges provides an alternative to binary accounts that describe that system as a dichotomy of official culture and unofficial culture, the state and the people, public self and private self, truth and lie — and ignore the crucial fact that, for many Soviet citizens, the fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialism were genuinely important, although they routinely transgressed and reinterpreted the norms and rules of the socialist state.

Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis


Kathy C. Charmaz - 2006
    In this important and essential new textbook, she introduces the reader to the craft of using grounded theory in social research, and provides a clear, step-by-step guide for those new to the field. Using worked examples throughout, this book also maps out an alternative vision of grounded theory put forward by its founding thinkers, Glaser and Strauss. To Charmaz, grounded theory must move on from its positivist origins and must incorporate many of the methods and questions posed by constructivists over the past twenty years to become a more nuanced and reflexive practice.