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The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit
by John V. PetrocelliExpanding upon his viral TEDx Talk, psychology professor and social scientist John V. Petrocelli reveals the critical thinking habits you can develop to recognize and combat pervasive false information that harms society in The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit.Bullshit is the foundation of contaminated thinking and bad decisions leading to health consequences, financial losses, legal consequences, broken relationships, and wasted time and resources.No matter how smart we believe ourselves to be, we’re all susceptible to bullshit—and we all engage in it. While we may brush it off as harmless marketing sales speak or as humorous, embellished claims, it’s actually much more dangerous and insidious. It’s how Bernie Madoff successfully swindled billions of dollars from even the most experienced financial experts with his Ponzi scheme. It’s how the protocols of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward resulted in the deaths of 36 million people from starvation. Presented as truths by authority figures and credentialed experts, bullshit appears legitimate, and we accept their words as gospel. If we don’t question the information we receive from bullshit artists to prove their thoughts and theories, we allow these falsehoods to take root in our memories and beliefs. This faulty data affects our decision making capabilities, sometimes resulting in regrettable life choices. But with a little dose of skepticism and a commitment to truth seeking, you can build your critical thinking and scientific reasoning skills to evaluate information, separate fact from fiction, and see through bullshitter spin. In The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit, experimental social psychologist John V. Petrocelli provides invaluable strategies not only to recognize and protect yourself from everyday bullshit, but to accept your own lack of knowledge about subjects and avoid in engaging in bullshit just for societal conformity.With real world examples from people versed in bullshit who work in the used car, real estate, wine, and diamond industries, Petrocelli exposes the red-flag warning signs found in the anecdotal stories, emotional language, and buzzwords used by bullshitters that persuade our decisions. By using his critical thinking defensive tactics against those motivated by profit, we will also learn how to stop the toxic misinformation spread from the social media influencers, fake news, and op-eds that permeate our culture and call out bullshit whenever we see it.
The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers
by Terry GouldCAN OPEN EROTICISM between more than two consenting adults be considered natural sexual behaviour? Is it possible to experience sex with other partners while happily ensconced in an emotionally monogamous marriage? Didn't this type of sexual "swinging" disappear with the 1960s and '70s? What are millions of middle-class couples getting up to on the weekend? These are the questions that arose as award-winning investigative journalist Terry Gould embarked upon a journey through a thriving subculture known as "the lifestyle."Ignored, dismissed or denigrated by the mainstream media, ordinary, married couples in the lifestyle are now getting together to openly express their erotic fantasies. Acting within strict rules of etiquette, everyday people -- social workers, physicians, school teachers -- participate in everything from sexual costume parties to multipartner sex as a form of social recreation within marriage.Is swinging merely an invention of sexually permissive modern times? As Gould discovered, the phenomenon has roots that go back thousands of years. From prehistoric fertility rituals to Dionysian festivals, from the nineteenth-century Onieda commune to the twentieth-century social mirror of films such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and The Ice Storm, spouse sharing has always been a part of human sexual practice.A deeper biological urge seems to motivate this pleasure-seeking practice, one that combines two paradoxical urges: the drive to seek long term partners for raising offspring and the equally powerful drive for sexual and genetic variety. Lifestyle couples have resolved these conflicting urges.For the rest of us, including our law enforcement agencies, the lifestyle can appear pornographic when strobe-lit by the camera's flash. But examined in the cool light of the latest research on evolutionary and emotional roots of human sexuality, the practices of lifestylers assume a profound meaning for all. The Lifestyle gives us a controversial and unique understanding of what it means to be part of a fast-growing subculture of consenting, mainstream adults who are changing the rules of sexual behavior for pair-bonded humans. Then again, perhaps they aren't changing anything at all.From the Hardcover edition.
The Light Of Knowledge: Literacy Activism and the Politics of Writing in South India (Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge)
by Francis CodySince the early 1990s hundreds of thousands of Tamil villagers in southern India have participated in literacy lessons, science demonstrations, and other events designed to transform them into active citizens with access to state power. These efforts to spread enlightenment among the oppressed are part of a movement known as the Arivoli Iyakkam (the Enlightenment Movement), considered to be among the most successful mass literacy movements in recent history. In The Light of Knowledge, Francis Cody’s ethnography of the Arivoli Iyakkam highlights the paradoxes inherent in such movements that seek to emancipate people through literacy when literacy is a power-laden social practice in its own right. The Light of Knowledge is set primarily in the rural district of Pudukkottai in Tamil Nadu, and it is about activism among laboring women from marginalized castes who have been particularly active as learners and volunteers in the movement. In their endeavors to remake the Tamil countryside through literacy activism, workers in the movement found that their own understanding of the politics of writing and Enlightenment was often transformed as they encountered vastly different notions of language and imaginations of social order. Indeed, while activists of the movement successfully mobilized large numbers of rural women, they did so through logics that often pushed against the very Enlightenment rationality they hoped to foster. Offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at an increasingly important area of social and political activism, The Light of Knowledge brings tools of linguistic anthropology to engage with critical social theories of the postcolonial state.
The Light of Learning: Selected Writings on Education
by Daisaku IkedaThis new selection of writings on education—many previously published under the title Soka Education—comes from some five decades of works by Buddhist philosopher and founder of the Soka schools system, Daisaku Ikeda. From educational proposals and university lectures to personal essays, the writings not only delve into the meaning of soka (value-creating) education but offer a hopeful vision of the power of education to bring happiness to the individual and peace to the world.
The Likeability Trap: How to Break Free and Succeed as You Are
by Alicia MenendezBe nice, but not too nice. Be successful, but not too successful. Just be likeable. Whatever that means?Women are stuck in an impossible bind. At work, strong women are criticized for being cold, and warm women are seen as pushovers. An award-winning journalist examines this fundamental paradox and empowers readers to let go of old rules and reimagine leadership rather than reinventing themselves.Consider that even competent women must appear likeable to successfully negotiate a salary, ask for a promotion, or take credit for a job well done—and that studies show these actions usually make them less likeable. And this minefield is doubly loaded when likeability intersects with race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and parental status. Relying on extensive research and interviews, and carefully examined personal experience, The Likeability Trap delivers an essential examination of the pressure put on women to be amiable at work, home, and in the public sphere, and explores the price women pay for internalizing those demands. Rather than advising readers to make themselves likeable, Menendez empowers them to examine how they perceive themselves and others and explores how the concept of likeability is riddled with cultural biases. Our demands for likeability, she argues, hinder everyone’s progress and power.Inspiring, thoughtful and often funny, The Likeability Trap proposes surprising, practical solutions for confronting the cultural patterns holding us back, encourages us to value unique talents and styles instead of muting them, and to remember that while likeability is part of the game, it will not break you.
The Limitations of Social Media Feminism: No Space of Our Own (Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI)
by Jessica Megarry#MeToo. Digital networking. Facebook groups. Social media continues to be positioned by social movement scholars as an exciting new tool that has propelled feminism into a dynamic fourth wave of the movement. But how does male power play out on social media, and what is the political significance of women using male-controlled and algorithmically curated platforms for feminism? To answer these questions, Megarry foregrounds an analysis of the practices and ethics of the historical Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), including the revolutionary characteristics of face-to-face organising and the development of an autonomous print culture. Centering discussions of time, space and surveillance, she utilises radical and lesbian feminist theory to expose the contradictions between the political project of women’s liberation and the dominant celebratory narratives of Web 2.0. This is the first book to seriously consider how social media perpetuates the enduring logic of patriarchy and howdigital activism shapes women’s oppression in the 21st century. Drawing on interviews with intergenerational feminist activists from the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, as well as archival and digital activist materials, Megarry boldly concludes that feminists should abandon social media and return to the transformative powers of older forms of women-centred political praxis. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Women’s and Gender Studies, Lesbian and Queer Studies, Social Movement Studies, Critical Internet Studies and Political Communication, as well as anyone with an interest in feminist activism and the history of the WLM.
The Limitations of Social Research (Longman Social Research Series)
by M. D. Shipman'Does the evidence reflect the reality under investigation?' This is just one of the important questions Marten Shipman asks in the fourth edition of his highly successful book, The Limitations of Social Research. Substantially revised and up-dated it probes not only the technical stages of research, but also its assumptions, procedures and dissemination.
The Limits Of Globalization: Cases And Arguments
by Alan ScottBoth the force and the limitations of the globalizing forces operating in the world today can best be understood through an analysis of their concrete manifestations. Using examples from the people's art of Potsdammer Platz to the ways in which Western cultural icons are reinterpreted in Asian magazines, this collection of essays unpicks the rhetoric of globalization in political analysis, cultural theory and urban and economic sociology and exposes the myth of the global society as in many cases a dangerous exaggeration.
The Limits and Lies of Human Genetic Research: Dangers For Social Policy (Reflective Bioethics)
by Jonathan Michael KaplanIn The Limits and Lies of Human Genetic Research, Jonathan Kaplan weighs in on the controversial subject of the roles genes play in determining aspects of physical and behavioral human variation. Limits and Lies makes the case that neither the information we have on genes, nor on the environment, is sufficient to explain the complex variations among humans.
The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario, 1920-1970 (The Royal Society of Canada Special Publications)
by James StruthersWith its roots in nineteenth-century poor relief, welfare is Canada’s oldest and most controversial social program. No other policy is so closely linked to debates on the causes of poverty, the meaning of work, the difference between entitlement and charity, and the definition of basic human needs. The first history of welfare in Canada’s richest province offers a new perspective on our contemporary response to poverty. Struthers examines the evolution of provincial and local programs for single mothers, the aged, and the unemployed between 1920 and 1970, when the modern welfare state first took shape. He analyses the roles of social workers; women’s groups; labour and the left; federal, provincial, and local welfare bureaucrats; and the poor themselves. The Story evolves through depression, war, and unprecedented postwar affluence. A wealth of detail supports this account of all the forces that have shaped welfare policy; bureaucratic imperatives, political professionals, the unemployed, labour unions, federal-provincial relations, provincial-municipal relations, and the spirit of the times. Based on extensive primary research, this definitive work covers much new ground, providing an indispensable reference on Ontario’s social welfare history(The Ontario Historical Studies Series)
The Limits of Authoritarian Governance in Singapore's Developmental State
by Lily Zubaidah Rahim Michael D. BarrThis book delves into the limitations of Singapore’s authoritarian governance model. In doing so, the relevance of the Singapore governance model for other industrialising economies is systematically examined. Research in this book examines the challenges for an integrated governance model that has proven durable over four to five decades. The editors argue that established socio-political and economic formulae are now facing unprecedented challenges. Structural pressures associated with Singapore’s particular locus within globalised capitalism have fostered heightened social and material inequalities, compounded by the ruling party’s ideological resistance to substantive redistribution. As ‘growth with equity’ becomes more elusive, the rationale for power by a ruling party dominated by technocratic elite and state institutions crafted and controlled by the ruling party and its bureaucratic allies is open to more critical scrutiny.
The Limits of Boundaries: Why City-regions Cannot be Self-governing
by Andrew SanctonAndrew Sancton combines his own broad knowledge of global changes with an outline and comparison of the viewpoints of prominent social scientists to argue that city regions in western liberal democracies will not and cannot be self-governing. Self-government requires a territory delineated by official boundaries, but the multiple boundaries of city-regions, unlike the clear and undisputed boundaries of provinces and states, continue to move outward due to the constant growth and expansion of urban populations and services.
The Limits of Consent: Sexual Assault and Affirmative Consent (Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies)
by Lisa Featherstone Renée Mickelburgh Cassandra Byrnes Jenny Maturi Kiara Minto Paige DonaghyThis open access book examines the ways that consent operates in contemporary culture, suggesting it is a useful starting point to respectful relationships. This work, however, seeks to delve deeper, into the more complicated aspects of sexual consent. It examines the ways meaningful consent is difficult, if not impossible, in relationships that involve intimate partner violence or family violence. It considers the way vulnerable communities need access to information on consent. It highlights the difficulties of consent and reproductive rights, including the use (and abuse) of contraception and abortion. Finally, it considers the ways that young women are reshaping narratives of sexual assault and consent, as active agents both online and offline. Though this work considers victimisation, it also pays careful attention to the ways vulnerable groups take up their rights and understand and practice consent in meaningful ways.
The Limits of Gendered Citizenship: Contexts and Complexities (Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality)
by Jeff Hearn Elżbieta H. Oleksy Dorota GolańskaThe underlying theme of this edited collection is gendered citizenship, as well as the challenges and limits that confront the gendering of citizenship. It critiques the notion of the genderless nation-state citizen — in both analytical and policy terms and contexts — and necessarily engages with at least three major sets of contradictions or tensions: limitations on achieving gender equal or gender equitable citizenship; relations and differences between gender equality policy, diversity policy, and gender mainstreaming; and interplays of academic analyses of and practical interventions on gendered citizenship. Contributors from diverse scientific disciplines and academic backgrounds aim to provide a better understanding of the challenges that societies within Europe and elsewhere face vis-à-vis diversity, regionalism, transnationalism, and migration.
The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development
by Matt AndrewsDeveloping countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. Andrews argues that reforms often fail to make governments better because they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function. However, there are realistic solutions emerging from institutional reforms in some developing countries. Lessons from these experiences suggest that reform limits, although challenging to adopt, can be overcome by focusing change on problem solving through an incremental process that involves multiple agents.
The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition
by William Davies"Brilliant...explains how the rhetoric of competition has invaded almost every domain of our existence.” —Evgeny Morozov, author of "To Save Everything, Click Here" “In this fascinating book Davies inverts the conventional neoliberal practice of treating politics as if it were mere epiphenomenon of market theory, demonstrating that their version of economics is far better understood as the pursuit of politics by other means." —Professor Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame "A sparkling, original, and provocative analysis of neoliberalism. It offers a distinctive account of the diverse, sometimes contradictory, conventions and justifications that lend authority to the extension of the spirit of competitiveness to all spheres of social life…This book breaks new ground, offers new modes of critique, and points to post-neoliberal futures.” —Professor Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster Since its intellectual inception in the 1930s and its political emergence in the 1970s, neo-liberalism has sought to disenchant politics by replacing it with economics. This agenda-setting text examines the efforts and failures of economic experts to make government and public life amenable to measurement, and to re-model society and state in terms of competition. In particular, it explores the practical use of economic techniques and conventions by policy-makers, politicians, regulators and judges and how these practices are being adapted to the perceived failings of the neoliberal model. By picking apart the defining contradiction that arises from the conflation of economics and politics, this book asks: to what extent can economics provide government legitimacy? Now with a new preface from the author and a foreword by Aditya Chakrabortty.
The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition
by William DaviesBrilliant...explains how the rhetoric of competition has invaded almost every domain of our existence." —Evgeny Morozov, author of To Save Everything, Click Here" "In this fascinating book Davies inverts the conventional neoliberal practice of treating politics as if it were mere epiphenomenon of market theory, demonstrating that their version of economics is far better understood as the pursuit of politics by other means." —Professor Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame "A sparkling, original, and provocative analysis of neoliberalism. It offers a distinctive account of the diverse, sometimes contradictory, conventions and justifications that lend authority to the extension of the spirit of competitiveness to all spheres of social life…This book breaks new ground, offers new modes of critique, and points to post-neoliberal futures." —Professor Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster Since its intellectual inception in the 1930s and its political emergence in the 1970s, neo-liberalism has sought to disenchant politics by replacing it with economics. This agenda-setting text examines the efforts and failures of economic experts to make government and public life amenable to measurement, and to re-model society and state in terms of competition. In particular, it explores the practical use of economic techniques and conventions by policy-makers, politicians, regulators and judges and how these practices are being adapted to the perceived failings of the neoliberal model. By picking apart the defining contradiction that arises from the conflation of economics and politics, this book asks: to what extent can economics provide government legitimacy? Now with a new preface from the author and a foreword by Aditya Chakrabortty.
The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)
by William Davies"Some books describe the neoliberal project using the neoliberals' own terms; others promote more profound understanding by bringing in other intellectual resources. Will Davies is one of the best of the latter. In this fascinating book he inverts the conventional neoliberal practice of treating politics as if it were mere epiphenomenon of market theory, demonstrating that their version of economics is far better understood as the pursuit of politics by other means." - Professor Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame "Writing with clarity and precision and drawing on a rich array of sources, Will Davies takes the sociological discussion of neo-liberalism, its past and possible futures, to newer and richer intellectual realms." - Professor Paul du Gay, Copenhagen Business School "A sparkling, original, and provocative analysis of neoliberalism. It offers a distinctive account of the diverse, sometimes contradictory, conventions and justifications that lend authority to the cumulative extension of competitive market principles and the spirit of competitiveness to all spheres of social life and that provide it with room for manoeuvre and reinvention in the face of resistance and crisis." - Professor Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster "In a world that seems to lurch from one financial crisis to the next, this book questions both the sovereignty of markets and the principles of competition and competitiveness that lie at the heart of the neoliberal project. This is a brilliant piece of work and is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics and economics of contemporary capitalism." - Professor Nicholas Gane, University of Warwick Since its intellectual inception in the 1930s and its political emergence in the 1970s, neo-liberalism has sought to disenchant politics by replacing it with economics. This agenda-setting text examines the efforts and failures of economic experts to make government and public life amenable to measurement, and to re-model society and state in terms of competition. In particular, it explores the practical use of economic techniques and conventions by policy-makers, politicians, regulators and judges and how these practices are being adapted to the perceived failings of the neoliberal model. By picking apart the defining contradiction that arises from the conflation of economics and politics, this book asks: to what extent can economics provide government legitimacy?
The Limits of Organization (Fels Center Of Government Ser.)
by Kenneth J. ArrowThe tension between what we wish for and what we can get, between values and opportunities, exists even at the purely individual level. A hermit on a mountain may value warm clothing and yet be hard-pressed to make it from the leaves, bark, or skins he can find. But when many people are competing with each other for satisfaction of their wants, learning how to exploit what is available becomes more difficult. In this volume, Nobel Laureate Kenneth J. Arrow analyzes why - and how - human beings organize their common lives to overcome the basic economic problem: the allocation of scarce resources. The price system is one means of organizing society to mediate competition, and Arrow analyzes its successes and failures. Alternative modes of achieving efficient allocation of resources are explored: government, the internal organization of the firm, and the 'invisible institutions' of ethical and moral principles. Professor Arrow shows how these systems create channels to make decisions, and discusses the costs of information acquisition and retrieval. He investigates the factors determining which potential decision variables are recognized as such. Finally, he argues that organizations must achieve some balance between the power of the decision makers and their obligation to those who carry out their decisions - between authority and responsibility.
The Limits of Organizational Change
by Herbert KaufmanThe environment of modern organizations is so complex and volatile that we take for granted that organizational change is necessary for organizational survival. Yet the literature on organizations has for years described manifold obstacles to such change. First published in 1971, this book extracts from that literature and from experience a comprehensive yet concise overview of those barriers. Because these elements of the analysis are as valid now as when they were originally written, The Limits of Organizational Change is still widely read and cited nearly a quarter-century later.From the premises of this argument, Kaufman drew a number of conclusions about organizational survival and extinction, age and size, centralization and decentralization, and organizational evolution. Subsequent research and reflection induced him to refine and modify some of those inferences. The modifications are spelled out in a new preface that gives fresh relevance to his findings and his conjectures.Yet The Limits of Organizational Change is not a ponderous, labored work. As one reviewer remarked, it is "a delightful set of essays . . . a review of empirical research in a witty, conversational style. . . ." (The Rocky Mountain Social Science Journal). It is a book one can enjoy as well as profit from, and will be a useful tool for managers, organizational studies scholars, and sociologists.
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism
by Andrew J. BacevichFrom an acclaimed conservative historian and former military officer, a bracing call for a pragmatic confrontation with the nation's three major problems: the economy, the government, and the endless wars.
The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720
by R. Douglas CopeExamines how the social class structure in colonial Mexico was much more complex then simple racial divisions between natives and Spanish. Mexico City is chosen as the exemplar because as capital of New Spain it was the most racially diverse population and because it provides a great fertility of sources, which include Inquisition and criminal cases, notarial records, civil and ecclesiastical documents, and parish registers for even the lower classes after about 1660.
The Limits of Rationality
by Roger BrubakerIn The Limits of Rationality Rogers Brubaker explores the intimate and ambiguous interplay between Max Weber's empirical work and his moral vision, between his historical and sociological analysis of the 'specific and peculiar rationalism' of modern Western civilization and his deeply ambivalent moral response to that rationalism. Weber's ideas about rationality are central to his sociological work, and they are central to his moral perspective. But these ideas are neither easily accessible nor easily understandable, in part because Weber never systematized them, in part because his work is usually encountered piecemeal and seldom studied in its entirety. Brubaker reconstructs Weber's rich but fragmented discussion of rationalism and rationalization in a systematic fashion, thereby illuminating his empirical and moral diagnosis of modernity - a diagnosis that remains unsurpassed in pathos and anyalytical power.
The Limits of State Power & Private Rights: Exploring Child Protection & Safeguarding Referrals and Assessments
by Lauren DevineThis book tackles a complex area of law, social policy and social work, providing a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical, practical and legal boundaries of State power following safeguarding and child protection referrals in England. The book examines the history, rationale and implications of the current position, concluding that the balance of power is weighted in favour of the State. The Limits of State Power & Private Rights is ground-breaking in its approach to the subject and its detailed, critical analysis. Traditionally the subject matter of the book is considered within a welfare framework. The analysis in this book argues that a policing agenda is embedded within policy but without appropriate safeguards and controls, creating potentially irreconcilable tension described by the author as the ‘welfare/policing dichotomy’. This book is of importance to academics, lawyers, social workers, policy makers, practitioners and service users. The book is written so as to be accessible to a multi-disciplinary audience, but is sufficiently detailed so as to be suitable for specialists and non-specialists alike in this subject area. The chapters include introductory and contextual sections as well as doctrinal, theoretical and socio-legal analysis. Although the focus is on the English system, the book is equally applicable to the many worldwide jurisdictions adopting the Anglo/American ‘child rights’ based framework of child protection. It is also of use as a comparative work in countries where a family support based system is practiced.
The Limits of Transnationalism
by Markus ThielThrough the application of public opinion, interview, and print-media analyses, this book provides evidence that the state of transnational identification among citizens in the EU as a result of post-Maastricht integration measures, such as the completion of the Common Market, the introduction of the Euro, the initiation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy etc. in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany had limited effects in the member states to the extent that national political cultures and mass media orientations are compatible with the goals of EU integration. Policy recommendations are derived by reviewing the complex relationship between EU policies and structural factors such as immigration, ageing and the mediatization of politics in which European integration occurs.