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The Intersection of Faith, Culture, and Indigenous Community in Malaysia and Bangladesh (SpringerBriefs in Social Work)
by Jahid Siraz Chowdhury Mohd Rashid Mohd Saad Kumarashwaran Vadevelu Paramjit Singh Jamir Singh Zulkarnain A. HattaThis book is a comprehensive study of the intersection of religion, Indigenous culture, and community life, featuring an in-depth examination of the Orang Asli in Malaysia and the Santals in Bangladesh that aims for a socially inclusive, harmonious, and peaceful society. It dives into the impact of conversion on Indigenous identities, employing extensive ethnographic and phenomenological methodologies. The authors explore the conversion process attentively, revealing hidden isolation. This compact volume offers intriguing insights into Southeast and South Asia's rich tapestry, including nuance to discussions concerning religious pluralism, human rights, and the pursuit of social justice. Readers gain a better understanding of varied religious communities and Indigenous perspectives in order to promote a more inclusive and fair society. In the book, the authors provide real-life experiences, extensive analysis, and practical solutions for Indigenous populations in Malaysia and Bangladesh. They blend together thoughts and narratives, encompassing sociopolitical and historical themes. With visuals, case studies, and varied views, the volume builds respect for global variety while driving societal inclusion with the spirit of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The Intersection of Faith, Culture, and Indigenous Community in Malaysia and Bangladesh addresses pressing social justice and human rights issues, pushing for rights-based society and diversity, while balancing academic rigor and accessibility. The book is intended for scholars and researchers interested in Indigenous peoples, religious conversion, social justice, and human rights. It offers detailed insights into the conversion experiences of Malaysian Orang Asli and Bangladeshi Santal groups, and provides commentary on civil freedoms following conversion and reveals complex views of these communities, making the volume useful for scholars researching intersectionality in religious conversions and the dynamics surrounding Indigenous populations. Policymakers in Malaysia, Bangladesh, and other Asian countries dealing with comparable concerns with converted Indigenous people might benefit from the book's evidence-based insights and challenges, promoting more inclusive and culturally sensitive policies and urging Malaysian and Bangladeshi governments to recognize conversion-related issues.
The Intersections of Whiteness (Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity)
by Mark Schmitt Evangelia KindingerTrumpism and the racially implied Islamophobia of the "travel ban"; Brexit and the yearning for Britain’s past imperial grandeur; Black Lives Matter; the public backlash against Merkel’s refugee policies in Germany. These seemingly national responses to the changing demographics in a multitude of Western nations need to be understood as effects of a global/transnational crisis of whiteness. The Intersections of Whiteness brings together scholars from different disciplines to shed light on these manifestations in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Germany. Applying methodology stemming from critical race theory’s investment in intersectionality, the contributions of this edited collection focus on specific intersections of whiteness with gender, class, space, affect and nationality. Offering valuable insights into the contours of whiteness and its instrumentalisation across different nations, societies and cultures, this incisive volume creates transnational dialogue and will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as critical whiteness and race studies, gender studies, cultural studies and social policy.
The Intertextual Knot: An Analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope
by Dario MartinelliThis book is a thorough analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) and of its multiple connections with the Leopold and Loeb murder case and the adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s eponymous play. As an all-encompassing portrait of the movie, the book discusses its aesthetics, style, role within cinema history, challenges in production, innovations introduced and of course Hitchcock’s signature features. However, as the analysis unfolds, the film reveals itself as an actual journey through the nightmares and the hopes that characterized the 20th century. Nazism and anti-Nazism, antisemitism, homophobia, democracy and totalitarianism, capital punishment and second chances, human rights, World War II, misogyny, tolerance and discrimination, Supermanism and humanism, artistic freedom and censorship. Subtly, often between the lines, and with Hitchcock's usual dark humor, Rope is nevertheless a much stronger social and political statement than it was ever given credit for. The Intertextual Knot is aimed at a varied readership, including film scholars, historians, philosophers and film enthusiasts.
The Interview: Research on Its Anatomy and Structure
by Arthur N. WiensNearly two decades of research in clinic, industry, and educational settings have enabled the authors to present this compact but comprehensive report on the structure of the interview process. Joseph D. Matarazzo and Arthur N. Wiens have put together a concise presentation of research evidence; free from the dogged adherence to personal opinion that plagues most literature on the subject. The authors present and discuss basic interview concepts: interviewer and interviewee difference in interview behavior, the stability of such behavior, and conditions, which may modify it (including the first solid evidence, independently cross validated by others, for the effect on the interviewee of specific and common interviewer tactics).The book contains a wealth of data on differences in the interview speech behavior of different types of patients, and between persons in different occupations, different administrative hierarchies, and different professional specialties (for example surgical versus psychiatric nurses). Data from the clinical setting also includes evidence for a new and heretofore unsuspected process variable; i.e., a synchrony in the interruption behavior of the therapist and his patient over many psychotherapy sessions.The undergraduate in the communications fields will find this book an excellent adjunct to any of a number of courses in his special curriculum. Graduate students will find a storehouse of leads for theses and dissertations; while the practitioner and teacher in these fields will find much that is new and important to him in each chapter.
The Intimate Life of Computers: Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s
by Reem HiluA feminist perspective on the early history of personal computing, revealing how computers were integrated into the most intimate aspects of family life The Intimate Life of Computers shows how the widespread introduction of home computers in the 1980s was purposefully geared toward helping sustain heteronormative middle-class families by shaping relationships between users. Moving beyond the story of male-dominated computer culture, this book emphasizes the neglected history of the influence of women&’s culture and feminist critique on the development of personal computing despite women&’s underrepresentation in the industry. Proposing the notion of &“companionate computing,&” Reem Hilu reimagines the spread of computers into American homes as the history of an interpersonal, romantic, and familial medium. She details the integration of computing into family relationships—from helping couples have better sex and offering thoughtful simulations of masculine seduction to animating cute robot companions and giving voice to dolls that could talk to lonely children—underscoring how these computer applications directly responded to the companionate needs of their users as a way to ease growing pressures on home life. The Intimate Life of Computers is a vital contribution to feminist media history, highlighting how the emergence of personal computing dovetailed with changing gender roles and other social and cultural shifts. Eschewing the emphasis on technologies and institutions typically foregrounded in personal-computer histories, Hilu uncovers the surprising ways that domesticity and family life guided the earlier stages of our all-pervasive digital culture.
The Introvert's Guide to the Workplace: Concrete Strategies for Bosses and Employees to Thrive and Succeed
by Thea OrozcoTap Into Your Natural Introvert Strengths in the Office with Actionable Tips and Advice Introverts make up one half of the population, and we&’re hardwired to thrive—especially in the workplace! However, it&’s not uncommon for introverts to feel out of place in the office, where it seems the only ones succeeding are outgoing personalities ready to toot their own horn. Thea Orozco busts that myth, showing how the workplace is truly a setting for introverts to succeed based on their innate skillset and natural introvert strengths. With topics ranging from overcoming phone phobia to developing an authentic leadership style, The Introvert's Guide to the Workplace guides introverts through thriving at work without having to shout—whether you are a boss, an employee, or a career person. Learn from actionable tips and practical advice, and surmount office challenges and let your introversion take the lead: Combat interview anxietyMake meaningful connections at networking eventsBe heard and noticed at meetings or on the stageOvercome imposter syndromeBecome an effective leader with your introvert strengthsAnd more! Including diverse expert interviews, The Introvert's Guide to the Workplace is every working introvert&’s handbook and guide that they can refer to throughout their career for guidance on tricky or draining situations and motivation to enlist the power of their inner introvert to succeed.
The Intuitive Customer
by Colin Shaw Ryan HamiltonYou can't solve today's problems with yesterday's thinking. In The Intuitive Customer: 7 Imperatives For Moving Your Customer Experience to the Next Level, authors Shaw and Hamilton explore the reasons organizations are struggling to improve their customer measures and are witnessing the plateauing of loyalty scores like Net Promoter. For Shaw and Hamilton, the answer is simple: you need to understand the intuitions that drive your customers' behavior at an emotional, subconscious and psychological level. This book describes where behavioral economics meets customer experience in a very easy to understand and practical way. By taking academic and scientific studies of behavioral economics and consumer psychology and applying them to real-world situations, Shaw and Hamilton present accessible concepts that innovative organization are using today to propel their customer experience strategies to the next level. They also share their proven methodologies and discuss how leading organizations have deployed these tools to great effect--and seen dramatic increases in loyalty scores and ROI as a result. Some of the critical concepts Shaw and Hamilton cover include: · Customers make decisions emotionally. · Customers don't always know why they do what they do. · Every customer has two ways of thinking. · Habits drive many of your customers' decisions. · People use mental shortcuts for decision-making. · Managing your reputation is an important part of the experience. · Customer loyalty is a function of memory. . . . and many more. Shaw and Hamilton have distilled this wisdom down to Seven Imperatives that an organization must embrace to move their customer experience to the next level. With this easy and entertaining read, yours could be next organization to take a massive leap forward.
The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction
by Pat ShipmanWith their large brains, sturdy physique, sophisticated tools, and hunting skills, Neanderthals are the closest known relatives to humans. Approximately 200,000 years ago, as modern humans began to radiate out from their evolutionary birthplace in Africa, Neanderthals were already thriving in Europe―descendants of a much earlier migration of the African genus Homo. But when modern humans eventually made their way to Europe 45,000 years ago, Neanderthals suddenly vanished. Ever since the first Neanderthal bones were identified in 1856, scientists have been vexed by the question, why did modern humans survive while their evolutionary cousins went extinct?
The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic (Princeton Legacy Library #454)
by Hadley CantrilOn Halloween night 1938, Orson Welles broadcast a radio adaptation of the H. G. Wells fantasy, The War of the Worlds. What listeners heard sounded so realistic that at least a million were frightened by word that "strange creatures" from Mars had landed in central New Jersey and were "unleashing a deadly assault." Several thousand were so terrified they ran into the streets, drove away in their cars, or called the police for information about how to escape. Why did so many panic when the circumstances reported were so improbable? That is just the question Hadley Cantril, then a young social psychologist, set out to answer.Originally published in 1940, The Invasion from Mars remains a classic. The broadcast provided a unique real-life opportunity to explore why the relatively new medium of radio could have such an effect. Using a mix of research methods, Cantril shows that the impact of the broadcast had less to do with what went out over the air than with the "standards of judgment" people did or did not use in evaluating what they were hearing. This book is of continuing value to those interested in communications and mass behavior.
The Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies
by James A. CliftonThis is an explosive collection of essays, written by leading scholars of North American Indians, most of them heavily involved in service and applied work, often on behalf of Indian clients, communities, and organizations. In an area saturated with deadening, consciously politicized orthodoxy, these seventeen essays aim at nothing less than the reconstruction of our understanding of the American Indian-past and presentThe volume examines in careful, accurate but uncompromising ways the recent construction of the prevailing conventional story-line about ""America's most favored underclass."" The first eight essays introduce the volume and treat a variety of specific invented traditions concerning Indians. These are followed by four essays on broader, thematic issues related to the demographic, religious, cultural, and kinship elements in Indian studies. The final five chapters express a comparative perspective: from Anglo and French Canada, Europe, from inside the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and from a legal position.The Invented Indian explores how cultural fictions promote divisiveness and translate into policy. Throughout, the volume reveals a deep and abiding respect for Indians, their histories, and their cultures, saving its critiques for jaundiced academics and callow politicians. Representing years of cooperative effort, this work brings together a group providing breadth and balance. Far more than a critical collection, it is a constructive effort to make sense of a field displaying empirical confusions and moral muddles. The volume will be of interest to anthropologists, professionals in Indian studies, and policymakers.
The Invention and Reinventions of Methodism: Sect, Church and Radical Movement (Routledge Methodist Studies Series)
by Andrew J. CheatleThis book focuses on the transformative journey of Methodism and tackles a profound question: How did a radical revival movement evolve into an established mainstream Church? With a global family of around eighty million, Methodism and its Holiness offshoots have come a long way since their origins as a fervent revival within the Church of England in the late 1730s. Once perceived as controversial and charismatic, early Methodists, led by John and Charles Wesley, preached salvation to unruly crowds, often facing fierce opposition. Despite its turbulent beginnings, the Wesleys skilfully kept the movement anchored to its Anglican roots, preventing it from fracturing entirely. This allowed Methodism to evolve into an established church while maintaining its distinct identity. The volume delves into the enduring legacy of early Methodism, exploring its theological influences and developments over time. With its identity wrapped up in dual focus on mission and holiness, Methodism’s impact on global Christianity is profound. From the Holiness movement to the rise of Pentecostalism, its early radical and charismatic practices still resonate in the Church today. Featuring essays from leading Wesleyan scholars, this book is valuable for anyone interested in the dynamic history and lasting influence of the Methodist tradition.
The Invention of Childhood
by Hugh CunninghamThe Invention of Childhood will paint a vivid picture of the lives of children in Britain from pagan Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. Drawing heavily on primary sources, such as diaries, autobiographies, paintings, photographs and letters, the book will present a complete chronological history of the experience of children in Britain during the past 1500 years. We will learn the key elements that have shaped their lives down the ages and how this has differed as a result of gender, geography and ethnicity. The book will also relate children's lives to larger events in national and international history. Written by Hugh Cunningham the Professor of History at the Universtity of Kent at Canterbury, and an expert on childhood history - the book will accompany the Radio 4 series presented by the highly respected children's author Michael Morpurgo. Michael is contributing a lengthy foreword to the book. 'The Invention of Childhood' will expand on a number of key themes from the radio series, including the idea of childhood as a distinct stage of life. Opinions on when childhood should start and end, and how it differs from adulthood have changed considerably down the centuries. And these inventions and reinventions of childhood (hence the title) have had a profound effect on children's lives. The prolonged childhood we enjoy in Britain today was a luxury few could afford in the past. This fascinating study will draw attention to the ways in which we may find childhood and children in the past quite similar to the present and to ways in which childrens lives from the past seem to differ sharply from the lives children lead today.
The Invention of Childhood Creativity: Colonialities and the Production of Difference (Routledge Cultural Studies in Knowledge, Curriculum, and Education)
by Cat MartinsThis text offers a comprehensive analysis of the concept of the modern creative and imaginative child in Western education. Drawing on archived sources and historical works, it reframes childhood creativity as a social, cultural, and scientific construction, asking how our thinking and acting toward the creative child have been produced historically. The text dissects the discursive construction of creativity as a natural and developmental attribute of the child. It argues that the idea of the White creative child, constructed through comparative reasoning, shaped by primitivism, and illustrated through botanical metaphors as close to nature and the senses, is a notion embedded with colonialities, forming part of a Western civilizing project and entrenched power-knowledge relations. A compelling and original account of childhood creativity, this text will appeal to researchers in arts education, early childhood education, curriculum studies, and the history of education.
The Invention of Free Press
by Edoardo TortaroloTracking the relationship between the theory of press control and the realities of practicing daily press censorship prior to publication, this volume on the suppression of dissent in early modern Europe tackles a topic with many elusive and under-researched characteristics. Pre-publication censorship was common in absolutist regimes in Catholic and Protestant countries alike, but how effective it was in practice remains open to debate. The Netherlands and England, where critical content segued into outright lampoonery, were unusual for hard-wired press freedoms that arose, respectively, from a highly competitive publishing industry and highly decentralized political institutions. These nations remained extraordinary exceptions to a rule that, for example in France, did not end until the revolution of 1789. Here, the author's European perspective provides a survey of the varying censorship regulations in European nations, as well as the shifting meanings of 'freedom of the press'. The analysis opens up fascinating insights, afforded by careful reading of primary archival sources, into the reactions of censors confronted with manuscripts by authors seeking permission to publish. Tortarolo sets the opinions on censorship of well-known writers, including Voltaire and Montesquieu, alongside the commentary of anonymous censors, allowing us to revisit some common views of eighteenth-century history. How far did these writers, their reasoning stiffened by Enlightenment values, promote dissident views of absolutist monarchies in Europe, and what insights did governments gain from censors' reports into the social tensions brewing under their rule? These questions will excite dedicated researchers, graduate students, and discerning lay readers alike.
The Invention of Green Colonialism
by Guillaume BlancThe story begins with a dream – the dream of Africa. Virgin forests, majestic mountains surrounded by savannas, vast plains punctuated with the rhythms of animal life where lions, elephants and giraffes reign as lords of nature, far from civilization – all of us carry such images in our heads, imagining Africa as a timeless Eden untouched by the ravages of modernity. But this Africa has never existed. The more we destroy nature here, the more we fantasize about it in Africa. Along with UNESCO, the WWF and other organizations, we convince ourselves that the African national parks are protecting the last vestiges of a world once untouched and wild. In reality, argues Guillaume Blanc, these organizations are responsible for naturalizing large tracts of the African continent, turning territories into parks and forcibly evicting thousands of people from the lands where they have lived for centuries. Making use of archives and oral histories, Blanc investigates this battle for a phantom Africa and the contradictory claims of nations who destroy nature at home while believing that they are protecting the natural world abroad. In so doing, they enact a new type of colonialism: green colonialism.
The Invention of Heterosexual Culture
by Louis-Georges TinThe rise of heterosexual culture and the resistance it met from feudal lords, church fathers, and the medical profession. Heterosexuality is celebrated—in film and television, in pop songs and opera, in literature and on greeting cards—and at the same time taken for granted. It is the cultural and sexual norm by default. And yet, as Louis-Georges Tin shows in The Invention of Heterosexual Culture, in premodern Europe heterosexuality was perceived as an alternative culture. The practice of heterosexuality may have been standard, but the symbolic primacy of the heterosexual couple was not. Tin maps the emergence of heterosexual culture in Western Europe and the significant resistance to it from feudal lords, church fathers, and the medical profession. Tin writes that before the phenomenon of "courtly love" in the early twelfth century, the man-woman pairing had not been deemed a subject worthy of more than passing interest. As heterosexuality became a recurrent theme in art and literature, the nobility came to view it as a disruption of the feudal chivalric ethos of virility and male bonding. If feudal lords objected to the "hetero" in heterosexuality and what they saw as the associated dangers of weakness and effeminacy, the church took issue with the “sexuality,” which threatened the Christian ethos of renunciation and divine love. Finally, the medical profession cast heterosexuality as pathology, warning of an epidemic of “lovesickness.” Noting that the discourse of heterosexuality does not belong to heterosexuals alone, Tin offers a groundbreaking history that reasserts the cultural identity of heterosexuality.
The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy (Contributions to Phenomenology #124)
by Claudio MajolinoThis book covers Husserl’s stance on the philosopher and the history of philosophy, whether or not such a history is part of the philosophical attitude itself, and if so, how Husserl’s phenomenology might weigh in on such matters. Firstly, this text spells out some of the manifold ways in which the history of philosophy works its way in Husserl’s phenomenology, showing how concepts, methods and problems drawn from various Ancient and Modern philosophical traditions (Platonism, Aristotelianism, Sophistry, Stoicism, Scholasticism, Modern Rationalism) are transformed and embedded within transcendental phenomenology itself. Secondly, it shows how a better understanding of the distinctive patterns by means of which Husserl’s phenomenology confronts the history of philosophy could be extremely significant for historians of philosophy who are interested in learning something entirely new about the unexplored horizons of such concepts, methods and problems. Finally, based on such twofold historical and philosophical approach and thanks to a substantial reinterpretation of some key phenomenological concepts such as “multiplicity”, “constitution”, “attitude” and “variation”, this book provides a novel and original reading of Husserl’s overall philosophical project in its full meaning and scope. By doing so, this volume appeals to both students and researchers and critically engages in mainstream interpretations of phenomenology, suggesting a unique take on the idea of transcendental phenomenology as a whole.
The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay's New York
by Mariana MogilevichThe interplay of psychology, design, and politics in experiments with urban open space As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with &“urban crisis,&” the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) experimented with a broad array of projects in open spaces to affirm the value of city life. Mariana Mogilevich provides a fascinating history of a watershed moment when designers, government administrators, and residents sought to remake the city in the image of a diverse, free, and democratic society.New pedestrian malls, residential plazas, playgrounds in vacant lots, and parks on postindustrial waterfronts promised everyday spaces for play, social interaction, and participation in the life of the city. Whereas designers had long created urban spaces for a broad amorphous public, Mogilevich demonstrates how political pressures and the influence of the psychological sciences led them to a new conception of public space that included diverse publics and encouraged individual flourishing. Drawing on extensive archival research, site work, interviews, and the analysis of film and photographs, The Invention of Public Space considers familiar figures, such as William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, in a new light and foregrounds the important work of landscape architects Paul Friedberg and Lawrence Halprin and the architects of New York City&’s Urban Design Group.The Invention of Public Space brings together psychology, politics, and design to uncover a critical moment of transformation in our understanding of city life and reveals the emergence of a concept of public space that remains today a powerful, if unrealized, aspiration.
The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages
by Geraldine HengIn The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, Geraldine Heng questions the common assumption that race and racisms only began in the modern era. Examining Europe’s encounters with Jews, Muslims, Africans, Native Americans, Mongols, and the Romani (“Gypsies”) from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, she shows how racial thinking, racial law, racial practices, and racial phenomena existed in medieval Europe before a recognizable vocabulary of race emerged in the West. Analyzing sources in a variety of media, including stories, maps, statuary, illustrations, architectural features, history, saints’ lives, religious commentary, laws, political and social institutions, and literature, she argues that religion – so much in play again today – enabled the positing of fundamental differences among humans that created strategic essentialisms to mark off human groups and populations for racialized treatment. Her groundbreaking study also shows how race figured in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe in this time.
The Invention of Women: Making An African Sense of Western Gender Discourses
by Oyeronke OyewumiA work that rethinks gender as a Western construction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Author Oyeronke Oyewumi reveals an ideology of biological determinism at the heart of Western social categories-the idea that biology provides the rationale for organizing the social world. And yet, she writes, the concept of OC woman, OCO central to this ideology and to Western gender discourses, simply did not exist in Yorubaland, where the body was not the basis of social roles. Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed and that the subordination of women is universal. The Invention of Women demonstrates, to the contrary, that gender was not constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age. A meticulous historical and epistemological account of an African culture on its own terms, this book makes a persuasive argument for a cultural, context-dependent interpretation of social reality. It calls for a reconception of gender discourse and the categories on which such study relies. More than that, the book lays bare the hidden assumptions in the ways these different cultures think. A truly comparative sociology of an African culture and the Western tradition, it will change the way African studies and gender studies proceed.
The Invention of World Religions
by Tomoko MasuzawaThe idea of "world religions" expresses a vague commitment to multiculturalism. Not merely a descriptive concept, "world religions" is actually a particular ethos, a pluralist ideology, a logic of classification, and a form of knowledge that has shaped the study of religion and infiltrated ordinary language. In this ambitious study, Tomoko Masuzawa examines the emergence of "world religions" in modern European thought. Devoting particular attention to the relation between the comparative study of language and the nascent science of religion, she demonstrates how new classifications of language and race caused Buddhism and Islam to gain special significance, as these religions came to be seen in opposing terms-Aryan on one hand and Semitic on the other. Masuzawa also explores the complex relation of "world religions" to Protestant theology, from the hierarchical ordering of religions typical of the Christian supremacists of the nineteenth century to the aspirations of early twentieth-century theologian Ernst Troeltsch, who embraced the pluralist logic of "world religions" and by so doing sought to reclaim the universalist destiny of European modernity.
The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy: Recycling Empire (Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics)
by Véronique DimierA comprehensive analysis of how European development policy was shaped, this book explores the role of former colonial officials in shaping the policy agenda and explores this example of 'recycled empire.' Dimier argues that this post-colonial agenda only changed as a result of pressure from the OECD and World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Invention of the 'Underclass': A Study in the Politics of Knowledge
by Loïc WacquantAt century’s close, American social scientists, policy analysts, philanthropists and politicians became obsessed with a fearsome and mysterious new group said to be ravaging the ghetto: the urban “underclass.” Soon the scarecrow category and its demonic imagery were exported to the United Kingdom and continental Europe and agitated the international study of exclusion in the postindustrial metropolis. In this punchy book, Loïc Wacquant retraces the invention and metamorphoses of this racialized folk devil, from the structural conception of Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to the behavioral notion of Washington think-tank experts to the neo-ecological formulation of sociologist William Julius Wilson. He uncovers the springs of the sudden irruption, accelerated circulation, and abrupt evaporation of the “underclass” from public debate, and reflects on the implications for the social epistemology of urban marginality. What accounts for the “lemming effect” that drew a generation of scholars of race and poverty over a scientific cliff? What are the conditions for the formation and bursting of “conceptual speculative bubbles”? What is the role of think tanks, journalism, and politics in imposing “turnkey problematics” upon social researchers? What are the special quandaries posed by the naming of dispossessed and dishonored populations in scientific discourse and how can we reformulate the explosive question of “race” to avoid these troubles? Answering these questions constitutes an exacting exercise in epistemic reflexivity in the tradition of Bachelard, Canguilhem and Bourdieu, and it issues in a clarion call for social scientists to defend their intellectual autonomy against the encroachments of outside powers, be they state officials, the media, think tanks, or philanthropic organizations. Compact, meticulous and forcefully argued, this study in the politics of social science knowledge will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, urban studies, ethnic studies, geography, intellectual history, the philosophy of science and public policy.
The Invention of the Favela (Latin America in Translation/en Traducción/em Tradução)
by Licia do ValladaresFor the first time available in English, Licia do Prado Valladares's classic anthropological study of Brazil's vast, densely populated urban living environments reveals how the idea of the favela became an internationally established—and even attractive and exotic—representation of poverty. The study traces how the term "favela" emerged as an analytic category beginning in the mid-1960s, showing how it became the object of immense popular debate and sustained social science research. But the concept of the favela so favored by social scientists is not, Valladares argues, a straightforward reflection of its social reality, and it often obscures more than it reveals.The established representation of favelas undercuts more complex, accurate, and historicized explanations of Brazilian development. It marks and perpetuates favelas as zones of exception rather than as integral to Brazil's modernization over the past century. And it has had important repercussions for the direction of research and policy affecting the lives of millions of Brazilians. Valladares's foundational book will be welcomed by all who seek to understand Brazil's evolution into the twenty-first century.
The Invisible Bestseller: Searching for the Bible in America
by Kenneth A. BriggsA personal and journalistic inquiry into the Bible's disappearance from American life In The Invisible Bestseller veteran religion writer Kenneth Briggs asks how the Bible remains the best-selling book of all time, while fewer Americans than ever can correctly articulate what it says, much less how it might offer guidance for their lives. How can a book — one that's found in courthouses, libraries, and millions of households across the land — be everywhere and nowhere at the same time? In his quest to make sense of the Bible's relative dis-appearance from public life, Briggs leads readers on a rollicking exploration that includes visits to Family Christian Stores, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the kitchen tables of everyday families. He offers insight on the Bible's current position in American public life and suggests where it may be headed next.