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Showing 141 - 160 of 19075 items
By The Macat Team. 2017
Marcel Mauss’s 1925 essay The Gift is an enduring classic of sociological and anthropological analysis by a thinker who is…
one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology. The Gift exploits Mauss’s high-level analytical and interpretative skills to produce a brilliant investigation of the forms, meanings, and structures of gift-giving across a range of societies. Mauss, along with many others, had noted that in a wide range of societies – especially those without monetary exchange or legal structures – gift-giving and receiving was carried out according to strict customs and unwritten laws. What he sought to do in The Gift was to analyse the structures that governed how and when gifts were given, received, and reciprocated in order to grasp what implicit and unspoken reasons governed these structures. He also wanted to apply his interpretative skills to asking what such exchanges meant, in order to explore the implications his analysis might have for modern, western cultures. In Mauss’s investigations, it became clear that gift-giving is, in many cultures, a crucial structural force, binding people together in a web of reciprocal commitments generated by the laws of gifting. Indeed, he concluded, gifts can be seen as the ‘glue’ of society..By Riley Quinn. 2017
In his 1997 work Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond marshals evidence from five continents and across 13,000 years of…
human history in an attempt to answer the question of why that history unfolded so differently in various parts of the globe. His results offer new explanations for why the unequal divisions of power and wealth so familiar to us today came into existence – and have persisted. Balancing materials drawn from a vast range of sources, addressing core problems that have fascinated historians, anthropologists, biologists and geographers alike – and blending his analysis to create a compelling narrative that became an international best-seller and reached a broad general market – required a mastery of the critical thinking skill of reasoning that few other scholars can rival. Diamond’s reasoning skills allow him to persuade his readers of the value of his interdisciplinary approach and produce well-structured arguments that keep them turning pages even as he refocuses his analysis from one disparate example to another. Diamond adds to that a spectacular ability to grasp the meaning of the available evidence produced by scholars in those widely different disciplines – making Guns, Germs and Steel equally valuable as an exercise in high-level interpretation.By Rodolfo Maggio. 2017
American scholar Jared Diamond deploys his powers of interpretation to great effect in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or…
Succeed, which seeks to understand the meaning behind the available evidence describing societies that have survived and those that have withered and died. Why, for example, did the Norsemen of Scandinavia who colonized Greenland in the early tenth century not survive, while the inhabitants of Highland New Guinea did? With the evidence to hand, Diamond notes that a society’s collapse tends to be preceded by a severe reduction in population and considerable decreases in political, economic and social complexity. Delving even deeper, Diamond isolates five major factors determine the success or failure of human societies in all periods of history: environmental degradation, which occurs when an ecosystem deteriorates as its resources are exhausted; climate change (natural or man-made); hostile neighbors; weakened trading partners; and access or otherwise to the resources that enable the society to adapt its challenges. The breadth of Diamond’s research provides the springboard from which to reach these definitions, but it inevitably also introduces complications; how can evidence produced by specialists in so many different disciplines be compared? Diamond’s ability to understand the meaning of the evidence at hand – and his readiness to seek and supply clarifications of meaning where necessary – underpin his achievement, and comprise a textbook example of how interpretative skills can provide a framework for strong critical thinking.By Douglas Hartmann. 2016
Midnight basketball may not have been invented in Chicago, but the City of Big Shoulders--home of Michael Jordan and the…
Bulls--is where it first came to national prominence. And it's also where Douglas Hartmann first began to think seriously about the audacious notion that organizing young men to run around in the wee hours of the night--all trying to throw a leather ball through a metal hoop--could constitute meaningful social policy. Organized in the 1980s and '90s by dozens of American cities, late-night basketball leagues were designed for social intervention, risk reduction, and crime prevention targeted at African American youth and young men. In Midnight Basketball, Hartmann traces the history of the program and the policy transformations of the period, while exploring the racial ideologies, cultural tensions, and institutional realities that shaped the entire field of sports-based social policy. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the book also brings to life the actual, on-the-ground practices of midnight basketball programs and the young men that the programs intended to serve. In the process, Midnight Basketball offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of the intricate ways sports, race, and risk intersect and interact in urban America.By Betty Friedan. 1981
Friedan in her book, says that once past the initial phases of working against injustices, the women's movement should focus…
on working with men to remake private and public planning that work against full lives with children for them.By Mandy Macdonald. 2006
Cuba is a great deal more than its controversial system of government. It is physically beautiful and seductive, and it…
has a rich and ever-evolving culture that existed long before the revolution of 1959 and will certainly long outlive it. The Cuban people are tough, resilient, egalitarian, and pathologically sociable. At the same time they can be opinionated, self-dramatizing, and sometimes infuriating or exhausting to be with. But they are always generous-spirited and invigorating. In Culture Smart! Cuba, we aim to help you get to know them better.By Robert Jensen. 2017
The End of Patriarchy asks one key question: what do we need to create stable and decent human communities that…
can thrive in a sustainable relationship with the larger living world? Robert Jensen's answer is feminism and a critique of patriarchy. He calls for a radical feminist challenge to institutionalized male dominance; an uncompromising rejection of men's assertion of a right to control women's sexuality; and a demand for an end to the violence and coercion that are at the heart of all systems of domination and subordination. The End of Patriarchy makes a powerful argument that a socially just society requires no less than a radical feminist overhaul of the dominant patriarchal structures.By Diane Bell, Renate Klein. 1996
Showing that a radical feminist analysis cuts across class, race, sexuality, region, and religion, the varied contributors in this collection…
reveal the global reach of radical feminism and analyze the causes and solutions to patriarchal oppression.By Rebecca Whisnant, Christine Stark. 2004
Including the latest research on prostitution and pornography, this essay anthology shows how the sex industries harm those within them…
while undermining the possibilities for gender justice, human equality, and stable sexual relationships. From sex industries survivors to social activists and theorists such as Taylor Lee, Adriene Sere, and Kristen Anderberg, this volume asses from a feminist perspective the racism, poverty, militarism, and corporate capitalism of selling sex through strip clubs, brothels, mail-order brides, and child pornography.By Wayne Pharr. 2014
In the early morning hours of December 8, 1969, hundreds of SWAT officers engaged in a violent battle with a…
handful of Los Angeles-based members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). Five hours and 5,000 rounds of ammunition later, three SWAT team members and three Black Panthers lay wounded. For the Panthers and the community that supported them, the shootout symbolized a victory, and a key reason for that victory was the actions of a 19-year-old rank-and-file member of the BPP: Wayne Pharr. Nine Lives of a Black Panther tells Pharr's riveting story of life in the Los Angeles branch of the BPP and gives a blow-by-blow account of how it prepared for and survived the massive attack. He illuminates the history of one of the most dedicated, dynamic, vilified, and targeted chapters of the BPP, filling in a missing piece of Black Panther history and, in the process, creating an engaging and hard-to-put-down memoir about a time and place that holds tremendous fascination for readers interested in African American militancy.By Boots Riley, Rickey Vincent. 2013
Examining the culture and politics of the Black Power era of the late 1960s, this book explores the relationship of…
soul music to the Black Power movement from the vantage point of the musicians and black revolutionaries themselves. The 1960s were a turbulent time for race relations in the United States, but no other area in the country epitomized the radical social change that was taking place more than the San Francisco Bay Area--the epicenter of the Black Panthers movement. This social history introduces fans of soul music and 20th-century U.S. history enthusiasts to the Black Panthers' own band, the Lumpen, a group comprised of rank-and-file members of the Oakland, California-based Party. During their year-long tenure, the Lumpen produced hard-driving rhythm-and-blues that asserted the revolutionary ideology of the Black Panthers. Through his rediscovery of the Lumpen, and based on new interviews with Party and band members, author Rickey Vincent provides an insider's account of Black Power politics and soul music aesthetics in an original narrative that reveals more detail about the Black Revolution than ever before.By Mumia Abu-Jamal, Stokely Carmichael. 1971
In the speeches and articles collected in this book, the black activist, organizer, and freedom fighter Stokely Carmichael traces the…
dramatic changes in his own consciousness and that of black Americans that took place during the evolving movements of Civil Rights, Black Power, and Pan-Africanism. Unique in his belief that the destiny of African Americans could not be separated from that of oppressed people the world over, Carmichael's Black Power principles insisted that blacks resist white brainwashing and redefine themselves. He was concerned not only with racism and exploitation, but with cultural integrity and the colonization of Africans in America. In these essays on racism, Black Power, the pitfalls of conventional liberalism, and solidarity with the oppressed masses and freedom fighters of all races and creeds, Carmichael addresses questions that still confront the black world and points to a need for an ideology of black and African liberation, unification, and transformation.By Melissa Mcdaniel. 1999
By Ming-Jer Chen. 2001
Chen (Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine--England) offers Western managers advice on…
navigating the Chinese business world. He explains the cultural and social principles underlying Chinese business organizations and their dynamics, illustrating his analysis with examples drawn from Asian and North American businesses. Communication patterns, networking, negotiation, competition, and the structure of China's transition economy are all discussed.By Stephanie Lowe, Andreas Mebert. 2017
In Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne tackle the central problem facing all businesses: how to perform…
better than your competitors? Their solution involves taking a creative approach to the normal view of competition. In the normal framework, competition is a zero-sum game: if there are two companies competing for the same market, as one does better, the other has to do worse. The authors’ creative leap is to suggest one can beat the competition by not competing. Companies should avoid confronting competitors in crowded marketplaces, what they call “red oceans,” and instead seek out new markets, or “blue oceans.” Once the blue oceans have been identified, companies can get down to the task of creating unique products which exploit that market. Chan and Mauborgne argue, for example, that a wine company might decide to start appealing to a group previously uninterested in wine. This would be a “blue ocean” market, giving the winemaker a huge advantage, which they could exploit by creating a wine that appealed to the tastes of a beer-drinking demographic. A classic of business writing, Blue Ocean Strategy is creative thinking and problem solving at its best.By Melissa Harris-Perry, Alison Stewart. 2013
Combining a fascinating history of the first U.S. high school for African Americans with an unflinching analysis of urban public-school…
education today, First Class explores an underrepresented and largely unknown aspect of black history while opening a discussion on what it takes to make a public school successful. In 1870, in the wake of the Civil War, citizens of Washington, DC, opened the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, the first black public high school in the United States; it would later be renamed Dunbar High and would flourish despite Jim Crow laws and segregation. Dunbar attracted an extraordinary faculty: its early principal was the first black graduate of Harvard, and at a time it had seven teachers with PhDs, a medical doctor, and a lawyer. During the school's first 80 years, these teachers would develop generations of highly educated, successful African Americans, and at its height in the 1940s and '50s, Dunbar High School sent 80 percent of its students to college. Today, as in too many failing urban public schools, the majority of Dunbar students are barely proficient in reading and math. Journalist and author Alison Stewart--whose parents were both Dunbar graduates--tells the story of the school's rise, fall, and possible resurgence as it looks to reopen its new, state-of-the-art campus in the fall of 2013.It's no secret that most girls, at some point, love all things princess: the poofy dresses, the plastic tiaras, the…
color pink. Even grown-up women can't get enough of royal weddings and royal gossip. Yet critics claim the princess dream sets little girls up to be weak and submissive, and allows grown women to indulge in fantasies of rescue rather than hard work and self-reliance.Enter Jerramy Fine - an unabashed feminist who is proud of her life-long princess obsession and more than happy to defend it. Through her amusing life story and in-depth research, Fine makes it clear that feminine doesn't mean weak, pink doesn't mean inferior, and girliness is not incompatible with ambition. From 9th century Cinderella to modern-day Frozen, from Princess Diana to Kate Middleton, from Wonder Woman to Princess Leia, Fine valiantly assures us that princesses have always been about power, not passivity. And those who love them can still be confident, intelligent women.Provocative, insightful, but also witty and personal, In Defense of the Princess empowers girls, women, and parents to dream of happily ever after without any guilt or shame.By Mary Beard. 2018
From prehistoric Mexico to modern Istanbul Mary Beard looks beyond the familiar canon of Western imagery to explore the…
history of art religion and humanity Conceived as a gorgeously illustrated accompaniment to How Do We Look and The Eye of Faith the famed Civilisations shows on PBS renowned classicist Mary Beard has created this elegant volume on how we have looked at art Focusing in Part I on the Olmec heads of early Mesoamerica the colossal statues of the pharaoh Amenhotep III and the nudes of classical Greece Beard explores the power hierarchy and gender politics of the art of the ancient world and explains how it came to define the so-called civilized world In Part II Beard chronicles some of the most breathtaking religious imagery ever made whether at Angkor Wat Ravenna Venice or in the art of Jewish and Islamic calligraphers to show how all religions ancient and modern have faced irreconcilable problems in trying to picture the divine With this classic volume Beard redefines the Western-and male-centric legacies of Ernst Gombrich and Kenneth ClarkBy Marifran Carlson. 1988
By Jerome Tuccille. 2015
The inspiring story of the first African American soldiers to serve during the postslavery eraMany have heard how Teddy Roosevelt…
and the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. But often forgotten in the great swamp of history is that Roosevelt's success was ensured by a dedicated corps of black soldiers--the so-called Buffalo Soldiers--who fought by Roosevelt's side during his legendary campaign. This book tells their story. They fought heroically and courageously, making Roosevelt's campaign a great success that added to the future president's legend as a great man of words and action. But most of all, they demonstrated their own military prowess, often in the face of incredible discrimination from their fellow soldiers and commanders, to secure their own place in American history.