front cover of Common Insects of Texas and Surrounding States
Common Insects of Texas and Surrounding States
A Field Guide
By John Abbott and Kendra Abbott
University of Texas Press, 2020

Thanks to its size and geographic position, Texas is home to nearly 30,000 species of insects, likely making its insect population the most diverse in the nation. Ranging from eastern and western to temperate and tropical species, this vast array of insects can be difficult to identify. In Common Insects of Texas and Surrounding States, John and Kendra Abbott have created the state's most comprehensive field guide to help readers recognize and understand these fascinating creatures.

Containing 1,300 species and more than 2,700 photographs, this guide offers a wealth of information about the characteristics and behaviors of Texas's insects. Each chapter introduces an order with a discussion of general natural history and a description of other qualities helpful in distinguishing its various species, while every species' entry provides a state map showing where it is most likely to be found, a key displaying its seasonal distribution, information about its habitat, and corresponding photos. Featuring colored tabs for quick reference, a glossary, and information about other arthropods, this guide is the perfect companion for anyone wanting to identify and learn more about the many insects of Texas.

[more]

front cover of Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams
Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams
Fungi, Lichenicolous Fungi, Lichenized Fungi, Slime Molds, Mosses, and Liverworts
Gary A. Laursen and Rodney D. Seppelt
University of Alaska Press, 2009

With Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams, Gary A. Laursen and Rodney Seppelt offer the first field guide to cryptogams of the Denali National Park and Preserve. Useful to both lay and professional investigators, this fully illustrated compendium covers mushroom fungi, lichenized fungi, lichenicolous fungi, slime molds, mosses, and liverworts. This field guide to commonly seen cryptogams will provide a basis for understanding their vast diversity of taxa, speciation, edibility, relative abundance, and utility, as well as the ecological roles played by these organisms.

[more]

front cover of Common Knowledge (Inaugural issue marking return to publication), Volume 8
Common Knowledge (Inaugural issue marking return to publication), Volume 8
Jeffrey M. Perl, ed.
Duke University Press
Duke University Press is pleased to begin publishing Common Knowledge with its re- inaugural issue, volume 8, number 1

Described by the New York Times as one of two American journals in which public intellectuals and other scholars prefer to publish, the highly acclaimed Common Knowledge has returned to publication after a two-year hiatus. In an effort to place itself in the ferment of intellectual life and broaden its geographical range, the journal has moved to the Middle East, to Israel. Born in an attempt to moderate and get past the "culture wars" of the 90s, Common Knowledge has moved, literally, to a war zone, and accordingly its editorial interests have broadened to include culture wars of a less metaphorical kind.
Its mission is both incredibly ambitious and shockingly simple: to open up lines of communication between the academy and the community of thoughtful people outside its walls. Common Knowledge was created to form a new intellectual model, one based on conversation or cooperation rather than on metaphors adopted from sports and war, of "sides" that one must "take." The journal will collect work from a variety of fields and specialties, including philosophy, religion, psychology, literary criticism, cultural studies, art history, political science, and social, cultural, and intellectual history.
Scholars such as Richard Rorty, Bruno Latour, Clifford Geertz, Julia Kristeva, Karma Nabulsi, and J. G. A. Pocock will cross paths with political figures like Prince Hassan of Jordan and President Arpad Goncz of Hungary, novelists like Susan Sontag, poets like Yves Bonnefoy, composers like Alexander Goehr, and journalists like Adam Michnik. The pages of Common Knowledge are sure to challenge the ways we think about theory and its relevance to humanity. The first volume will feature the beginning of a Seriatim Symposium, “Disagreement, Enmity, and Dispute,” which will include discussions of the title concepts from a variety of theoretical perspectives. The Symposium asks why, in an intellectual context in which “true” and “real” are words that can be used only in condescending scare quotes, there is so much absolute conflict. If truth and reality are constructions, then why aren’t we constructing consensual orders (metaphysical and social) that are conducive to peace, calm, and cooperation?

Contributors for forthcoming issues include: Manfred Frank, Jacques Le Goff, Vicki Hearne, Sissela Bok, Edward Cardinal Cassidy, Linda Hutcheon, G. Thomas Tanselle, Arlette Farge, Marcel Detienne, Caryl Emerson, Stanley Katz, and Peter Laslett.


[more]

front cover of Common Knowledge
Common Knowledge
News and the Construction of Political Meaning
W. Russell Neuman, Marion R. Just, and Ann N. Crigler
University of Chicago Press, 1992
Photo opportunities, ten-second sound bites, talking heads and celebrity anchors: so the world is explained daily to millions of Americans. The result, according to the experts, is an ignorant public, helpless targets of a one-way flow of carefully filtered and orchestrated communication. Common Knowledge shatters this pervasive myth. Reporting on a ground-breaking study, the authors reveal that our shared knowledge and evolving political beliefs are determined largely by how we actively reinterpret the images, fragments, and signals we find in the mass media.

For their study, the authors analyzed coverage of 150 television and newspaper stories on five prominent issues—drugs, AIDS, South African apartheid, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the stock market crash of October 1987. They tested audience responses of more than 1,600 people, and conducted in-depth interviews with a select sample. What emerges is a surprisingly complex picture of people actively and critically interpreting the news, making sense of even the most abstract issues in terms of their own lives, and finding political meaning in a sophisticated interplay of message, medium, and firsthand experience.

At every turn, Common Knowledge refutes conventional wisdom. It shows that television is far more effective at raising the saliency of issues and promoting learning than is generally assumed; it also undermines the assumed causal connection between newspaper reading and higher levels of political knowledge. Finally, this book gives a deeply responsible and thoroughly fascinating account of how the news is conveyed to us, and how we in turn convey it to others, making meaning of at once so much and so little. For anyone who makes the news—or tries to make anything of it—Common Knowledge promises uncommon wisdom.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Common Lands, Common People
The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England
Richard W. Judd
Harvard University Press, 1997

In this innovative study of the rise of the conservation ethic in northern New England, Richard Judd shows that the movement that eventually took hold throughout America had its roots among the communitarian ethic of countrypeople rather than among urban intellectuals or politicians. Drawing on agricultural journals and archival sources such as legislative petitions, Judd demonstrates that debates over access to and use of forests and water, though couched in utilitarian terms, drew their strength and conviction from deeply held popular notions of properly ordered landscapes and common rights to nature.

Unlike earlier attempts to describe the conservation movement in its historical context, which have often assumed a crude dualism in attitudes toward nature--democracy versus monopoly, amateur versus professional, utilitarian versus aesthete--this study reveals a complex set of motives and inspirations behind the mid-nineteenth-century drive to conserve natural resources. Judd suggests that a more complex set of contending and complementary social forces was at work, including traditional folk values, an emerging science of resource management, and constantly shifting class interests.

Common Lands, Common People tells us that ordinary people, struggling to define and redefine the morality of land and resource use, contributed immensely to America's conservation legacy.

[more]

front cover of The Common Law
The Common Law
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Harvard University Press, 2009
Much more than an historical examination of liability, criminal law, torts, bail, possession and ownership, and contracts, The Common Law articulates the ideas and judicial theory of one of the greatest justices of the Supreme Court. G. Edward White reminds us why the book remains essential reading not only for law students but also for anyone interested in American history. The text published is, with occasional corrections of typographical errors, identical with that found in the first and all subsequent printings by Little, Brown.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Common Law
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Harvard University Press

front cover of A Common Law for the Age of Statutes
A Common Law for the Age of Statutes
Guido Calabresi
Harvard University Press, 1982
The dominance of legislatures and statutory law has put an impossible burden on the courts. Guido Calabresi thinks it is time for this country seriously to consider returning to a traditional American judicial–legislative balance in which courts would enlarge the common law and would also decide when a rule of law has seen its day and should be revised.
[more]

front cover of Common Law Judging
Common Law Judging
Subjectivity, Impartiality, and the Making of Law
Douglas E. Edlin
University of Michigan Press, 2016
Are judges supposed to be objective? Citizens, scholars, and legal professionals commonly assume that subjectivity and objectivity are opposites, with the corollary that subjectivity is a vice and objectivity is a virtue. These assumptions underlie passionate debates over adherence to original intent and judicial activism.

In Common Law Judging, Douglas Edlin challenges these widely held assumptions by reorienting the entire discussion. Rather than analyze judging in terms of objectivity and truth, he argues that we should instead approach the role of a judge’s individual perspective in terms of intersubjectivity and validity. Drawing upon Kantian aesthetic theory as well as case law, legal theory, and constitutional theory, Edlin develops a new conceptual framework for the respective roles of the individual judge and of the judiciary as an institution, as well as the relationship between them, as integral parts of the broader legal and political community. Specifically, Edlin situates a judge’s subjective responses within a form of legal reasoning and reflective judgment that must be communicated to different audiences.

Edlin concludes that the individual values and perspectives of judges are indispensable both to their judgments in specific cases and to the independence of the courts. According to the common law tradition, judicial subjectivity is a virtue, not a vice.

[more]

front cover of The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000–1800
The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000–1800
Manlio Bellomo
Catholic University of America Press, 1995
With a vigor and passion rarely found in a scholarly text, Manlio Bellomo has written a broad history of the western European legal tradition. It is now made available to an English-speaking audience in an elegant and lucid translation from the original Italian.
[more]

front cover of The Common Lot and Other Stories
The Common Lot and Other Stories
The Published Short Fiction, 1908–1921
Emma Bell Miles
Ohio University Press, 2016

The seventeen narratives of The Common Lot and Other Stories, published in popular magazines across the United States between 1908 and 1921 and collected here for the first time, are driven by Emma Bell Miles’s singular vision of the mountain people of her home in southeastern Tennessee. That vision is shaped by her strong sense of social justice, her naturalist’s sensibility, and her insider’s perspective.

Women are at the center of these stories, and Miles deftly works a feminist sensibility beneath the plot of the title tale about a girl caught between present drudgery in her father’s house and prospective drudgery as a young wife in her own. Wry, fiery, and suffused with details of both natural and social worlds, the pieces collected here provide a particularly acute portrayal of Appalachia in the early twentieth century.

Miles’s fiction brings us a world a century in the past, but one that will easily engage twenty-first-century readers. The introduction by editor and noted Miles expert Grace Toney Edwards places Miles in the literary context of her time. Edwards highlights Miles’s quest for women’s liberation from patriarchal domination and oppressive poverty, forces against which Miles herself struggled in making a name for herself as a writer and artist. Illustrations by the author and Miles family photographs complement the stories.

[more]

front cover of Common Mosses, Liverworts, and Lichens of Ohio
Common Mosses, Liverworts, and Lichens of Ohio
A Visual Guide
Robert Klips
Ohio University Press, 2022

This engaging illustrated guidebook reveals the fascinating mosses and lichens that homeowners, outdoorspeople, and nature lovers encounter every day in Ohio and the Midwest.

In this guide to the most common and distinctive moss, liverwort, and lichen species in Ohio, readers will find concise physical descriptions, facts about natural history and ecology, and tips to distinguish look-alike species, all presented in a friendly, conversational tone.

Featuring detailed photographs of the plant and plantlike species in their natural settings, the book covers 106 mosses, thirty liverworts, and one hundred lichens and offers several avenues to match a specimen to its description page. “Where They Grow” chapters spotlight species commonly encountered on field outings, and field keys to help readers quickly identify unfamiliar samples.

While designed primarily as an identification tool, this guide also frames moss and lichen spotting in a scientific context. The two main sections—bryophytes and lichens—detail their respective taxonomic kingdoms, explain their life cycles and means of reproduction, and illustrate variation in the traits used for identification. The book is an introduction to the biology of these intriguing but too-often-overlooked organisms and a means to enjoy, identify, and catalog the biodiversity all around us.

[more]

front cover of Common People
Common People
In Pursuit of My Ancestors
Alison Light
University of Chicago Press, 2015
“Family history begins with missing persons,” Alison Light writes in Common People. We wonder about those we’ve lost, and those we never knew, about the long skein that led to us, and to here, and to now. So we start exploring.
 
Most of us, however, give up a few generations back. We run into a gap, get embarrassed by a ne’er-do-well, or simply find our ancestors are less glamorous than we’d hoped. That didn’t stop Alison Light: in the last weeks of her father’s life, she embarked on an attempt to trace the history of her family as far back as she could reasonably go. The result is a clear-eyed, fascinating, frequently moving account of the lives of everyday people, of the tough decisions and hard work, the good luck and bad breaks, that chart the course of a life. Light’s forebears—servants, sailors, farm workers—were among the poorest, traveling the country looking for work; they left few lasting marks on the world. But through her painstaking work in archives, and her ability to make the people and struggles of the past come alive, Light reminds us that “every life, even glimpsed through the chinks of the census, has its surprises and secrets.”
 
What she did for the servants of Bloomsbury in her celebrated Mrs. Woolf and the Servants Light does here for her own ancestors, and, by extension, everyone’s: draws their experiences from the shadows of the past and helps us understand their lives, estranged from us by time yet inextricably interwoven with our own. Family history, in her hands, becomes a new kind of public history.
[more]

front cover of The Common Place of Law
The Common Place of Law
Stories from Everyday Life
Patricia Ewick and Susan S. Silbey
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Why do some people not hesitate to call the police to quiet a barking dog in the middle of the night, while others accept the pain and losses associated with defective products, unsuccesful surgery, and discrimination? Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey collected accounts of the law from more than four hundred people of diverse backgrounds in order to explore the different ways that people use and experience it. Their fascinating and original study identifies three common narratives of law that are captured in the stories people tell.

One narrative is based on an idea of the law as magisterial and remote. Another views the law as a game with rules that can be manipulated to one's advantage. A third narrative describes the law as an arbitrary power that is actively resisted. Drawing on these extensive case studies, Ewick and Silbey present individual experiences interwoven with an analysis that charts a coherent and compelling theory of legality. A groundbreaking study of law and narrative, The Common Place of Law depicts the institution as it is lived: strange and familiar, imperfect and ordinary, and at the center of daily life.
[more]

front cover of Common Places
Common Places
Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia
Svetlana Boym
Harvard University Press, 1995

What is the “real Russia”? What is the relationship between national dreams and kitsch, between political and artistic utopia and everyday existence? Commonplaces of daily living would be perfect clues for those seeking to understand a culture. But all who write big books on Russian life confess their failure to get properly inside Russia, to understand its “doublespeak.”

Svetlana Boym is a unique guide. A member of the last Soviet Generation, the Russian equivalent of our Generation X, she grew up in Leningrad and has lived in the West for the past thirteen years. Her book provides a view of Russia that is historically informed, replete with unexpected detail, and everywhere stamped with authority. Alternating analysis with personal accounts of Russian life, Boym conveys the foreignness of Russia and examines its peculiar conceptions of private life and common good, of Culture and Trash, of sincerity and banality. Armed with a Dictionary of Untranslatable Terms, we step around Uncle Fedia asleep in the hall, surrounded by a puddle of urine, and enter the Communal Apartment, the central exhibit of the book. It is the ruin of the communal utopia and a unique institution of Soviet daily life; a model Soviet home and a breeding ground for grassroots informants. Here, privacy is forbidden; here the inhabitants defiantly treasure their bits of “domestic trash,” targets of ideological campaigns for the transformation (perestroika) of everyday life.

Against the Russian and Soviet myths of national destiny, the trivial, the ordinary, even the trashy, take on a utopian dimension. Boym studies Russian culture in a broad sense of the word; she ranges from nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectual thought to art and popular culture. With her we go walking in Moscow and Leningrad, eavesdrop on domestic life, and discover jokes, films, and TV programs. Boym then reflects on the 1991 coup that marked the end of the Soviet Union and evoked fin-de-siècle apocalyptic visions. The book ends with a poignant reflection on the nature of communal utopia and nostalgia, on homesickness and the sickness of being home.

[more]

front cover of The Common Pot
The Common Pot
The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast
Lisa Brooks
University of Minnesota Press, 2008

front cover of Common Prayer
Common Prayer
The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England
Ramie Targoff
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Common Prayer explores the relationship between prayer and poetry in the century following the Protestant Reformation. Ramie Targoff challenges the conventional and largely misleading distinctions between the ritualized world of Catholicism and the more individualistic focus of Protestantism. Early modern England, she demonstrates, was characterized less by the triumph of religious interiority than by efforts to shape public forms of devotion. This provocatively revisionist argument will have major implications for early modern studies.

Through readings of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard Hooker's Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry and his translations of the Psalms, John Donne's sermons and poems, and George Herbert's The Temple, Targoff uncovers the period's pervasive and often surprising interest in cultivating public and formalized models of worship. At the heart of this study lies an original and daring approach to understanding the origins of devotional poetry; Targoff shows how the projects of composing eloquent verse and improving liturgical worship come to be deeply intertwined. New literary practices, then, became a powerful means of forging common prayer, or controlling private and otherwise unmanageable expressions of faith.
[more]

front cover of The Common Rocks and Minerals of Missouri
The Common Rocks and Minerals of Missouri
W. D. Keller
University of Missouri Press, 1961

The Missouri Handbooks are intended to bring the products of extensive research to the general public in nontechnical yet scholarly terms and in a convenient paperback format.

[more]

front cover of Common Sense
Common Sense
Thomas Paine
Harvard University Press, 2010
“In Common Sense a writer found his moment to change the world,” Alan Taylor writes in his introduction. When Paine’s attack on the British mixed constitution of kings, lords, and commons was published in January 1776, fighting had already erupted between British troops and American Patriots, but many Patriots still balked at seeking independence. “By discrediting the sovereign king,” Taylor argues, “Paine made independence thinkable—as he relocated sovereignty from a royal family to the collective people of a republic.” Paine’s American readers could conclude that they stood at “the center of a new and coming world of utopian potential.” The John Harvard Library edition follows the text of the expanded edition printed by the shop of Benjamin Towne for W. and T. Bradford of Philadelphia.
[more]

front cover of Common Sense
Common Sense
A Political History
Sophia Rosenfeld
Harvard University Press, 2014

Common sense has always been a cornerstone of American politics. In 1776, Tom Paine’s vital pamphlet with that title sparked the American Revolution. And today, common sense—the wisdom of ordinary people, knowledge so self-evident that it is beyond debate—remains a powerful political ideal, utilized alike by George W. Bush’s aw-shucks articulations and Barack Obama’s down-to-earth reasonableness. But far from self-evident is where our faith in common sense comes from and how its populist logic has shaped modern democracy. Common Sense: A Political History is the first book to explore this essential political phenomenon.

The story begins in the aftermath of England’s Glorious Revolution, when common sense first became a political ideal worth struggling over. Sophia Rosenfeld’s accessible and insightful account then wends its way across two continents and multiple centuries, revealing the remarkable individuals who appropriated the old, seemingly universal idea of common sense and the new strategic uses they made of it. Paine may have boasted that common sense is always on the side of the people and opposed to the rule of kings, but Rosenfeld demonstrates that common sense has been used to foster demagoguery and exclusivity as well as popular sovereignty. She provides a new account of the transatlantic Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions, and offers a fresh reading on what the eighteenth century bequeathed to the political ferment of our own time. Far from commonsensical, the history of common sense turns out to be rife with paradox and surprise.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Common Sense of Science
With a New Preface by Sir Hermann Bondi
J. Bronowski
Harvard University Press

J. Bronowski was both a distinguished mathematician and a poet, a philosopher of science and a literary critic who wrote a well-known study of William Blake. Dr. Bronowski’s very career was founded on the premise of an intimate connection between science and the humanities, disciplines which are still generally thought to be worlds apart.

The Common Sense of Science, a book which remains as topical today as it was when it first appeared twenty-five years ago, articulates and develops Bronowski’s provocative idea that the sciences and the arts fundamentally share the same imaginative vision.

[more]

front cover of Common Sense Police Review
Common Sense Police Review
Douglas Perez
Temple University Press, 1995
"This book provides knowledge that will be useful to city governments, civil rights organizations, community leaders, clergy, civilian review board advocates, as well as police chiefs and unions. It sheds considerable light on an important issue...[and] makes clear that there are wide ranging variations among departments in policies, accepted practices, management control of the use of force, and accountability of supervisors and officers who use excessive force." --Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Police Policy Board of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Common Sense about Police Review is the first comparative study to consider both civilian and internal police review processes. Using survey research of police attitudes and citizen complaints compiled over fifteen years from police departments across the nation, Douglas W. Perez analyzes past and current review systems as a way to develop criteria for comparing three archetypal systems of police review: internal, external (civilian), and hybrid forms of the two. High media visibility of several events--the 1988 police riot in New York City's Tompkins Square, the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King, and the 1992 beating death of Malice Green by Detroit police detectives--has brought police review back into the public arena; not since civil rights demonstrators clashed with police in the 1960s has officer accountability been so hotly debated. Crucial to any monitoring system are guidelines, which Perez stresses must insist on rigorous investigations of alleged police abuses, outline strict limitations of police action, strive to bridge gaps between police officers and citizens, and exonerate officers who are found to have acted properly and legally. With these standards, the author asserts, a balance between self-sanctioning and enforced regulation can be achieved. Examining fairness, objectivity, and thoroughness in review systems throughout the country, Perez offers a model for the "ideal" police review system. Included are valuable discussions of both the causes of police attitudes and behavior and the misconceptions and expectations that can contribute to a pervasive public image of police malpractice. Perez provides helpful reflections on the role of politicians and administrators in implementing and maintaining police accountability.
[more]

logo for University of Wisconsin Press
A Common Spring
Crime Novel and Classic
Nadya Aisenberg
University of Wisconsin Press, 1980

Nadya Aisenberg discusses the potentialities of the crime novel, its implications, principles, and scope, and its analogy ot myth and the fairy tale. She proposes that the detective story and the thriller have made an unacknowledged contribution to "serious" literature. Her discussion of Dickens, Conrad, and Green indicate that each borrowed many important ingredients from the formulaic novel.

[more]

front cover of Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion
Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion
Playhouses and Playgoers in Elizabethan England
William N. West
University of Chicago Press, 2021
A new account of playgoing in Elizabethan England, in which audiences participated as much as performers.
 

What if going to a play in Elizabethan England was more like attending a football match than a Broadway show—or playing in one? In Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion, William N. West proposes a new account of the kind of participatory entertainment expected by the actors and the audience during the careers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. West finds surprising descriptions of these theatrical experiences in the figurative language of early modern players and playgoers—including understanding, confusion, occupation, eating, and fighting. Such words and ways of speaking are still in use today, but their earlier meanings, like that of theater itself, are subtly, importantly different from our own. Playing was not confined to the actors on the stage but filled the playhouse, embracing audiences and performers in collaborative experiences that did not belong to any one alone but to the assembled, various crowd.  What emerged in playing was a kind of thinking and feeling distributed across persons and times that were otherwise distinct. Thrown apples, smashed bottles of beer, and lumbering bears—these and more gave verbal shape to the physical interactions between players and playgoers, creating circuits of exchange, production, and consumption.  
 
[more]

front cover of Common Values
Common Values
Sissela Bok
University of Missouri Press, 2002
In Common Values, now with a new preface,Bok writes eloquently and clearly while combining moral theory with practical ethics, demonstrating how moral values apply to all facets of life—personal, professional, domestic, and international. Drawing on a great deal of historical material, Bok also includes in her examination consideration of the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights; the World Parliament of Religions; the publication of Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II's proclamation on morality; and the International Commission of Global Governance. Bok's defense of shared morality addresses a crucial topic for our time.
[more]

front cover of Common Woody Plants and Cacti of South Texas
Common Woody Plants and Cacti of South Texas
A Field Guide
By Richard B. Taylor with Texas Parks & Wildlife Department
University of Texas Press, 2014

Woody plants and cacti are vital staple foods for cattle, deer, and other wildlife in drought-prone South Texas. Ranchers, hunters, and land managers who need to identify these plants relied on A Field Guide to Common South Texas Shrubs (published by Texas Parks & Wildlife Press and distributed by UT Press), which is no longer in print. Responding to ongoing demand for the book, Richard B. Taylor has completely updated and expanded it with seven new species, new photographs, and a quick plant identification key.

Common Woody Plants and Cacti of South Texas is an easy-to-use plant identification field guide to fifty species that comprise an estimated 90 percent of the region’s woody canopy cover north of the Rio Grande Valley. The species accounts include photographs, descriptions, values to livestock and wildlife, and nutritional information. The book also provides historical perspectives and information on brush management techniques and strategies, as well as habitat appraisal. All of these resources will enable readers to analyze stocking rates for deer and cattle, evaluate a prospective hunting lease, or buy property.

[more]

logo for The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Common-Channel Signalling
Richard J. Manterfield
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 1991
Signalling is the life-blood of telecommunications and common-channel signalling is the key to providing flexible and cost-effective services to customers. This book commences with the basics of signalling and then unveils the complexities of common-channel signalling systems. The book is written to appeal to a wide range of readership. The novice can build up a comprehensive understanding of signalling by systematically making progress through the book. Experts in telecommunications who wish to understand the specialist subject can select appropriate text, guided by the chapter summaries. Experts in signalling will find the book useful in extending their knowledge of a very broad subject. The glossary cuts through the maze of jargon.
[more]

front cover of Commoner Ritual and Ideology in Ancient Mesoamerica
Commoner Ritual and Ideology in Ancient Mesoamerica
Nancy Gonlin
University Press of Colorado, 2016
Were most commoners in ancient Mesoamerica poor? In a material sense, yes, probably so. Were they poor in their beliefs and culture? Certainly not, as Commoner Ritual and Ideology in Ancient Mesoamerica demonstrates.

This volume explores the ritual life of Mesoamerica's common citizens, inside and outside of the domestic sphere, from Formative through Postclassic periods. Building from the premise that ritual and ideological expression inhered at all levels of society in Mesoamerica, the contributors demonstrate that ideology did not emanate solely from exalted individuals and that commoner ritual expression was not limited to household contexts. Taking an empirical approach to this under-studied and under-theorized area, contributors use material evidence to discover how commoner status conditioned the expression of ideas and values.

Revealing complex social hierarchies that varied across time and region, this volume offers theoretical approaches to commoner ideology, religious practice, and sociopolitical organization and builds a framework for future study of the correlation of ritual and ideological expression with social position for Mesoamericanists and archaeologists worldwide.
[more]

front cover of Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federic
Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federic
Camille Barbagallo, Nicholas Beuret and David Harvie
Pluto Press, 2019

front cover of Commons and Lords
Commons and Lords
A Short Anthropology of Parliament
Emma Crewe
Haus Publishing, 2015
The British Parliament rewards close scrutiny not just for the sake of democracy, but also because the surprises it contains challenge our understanding of British politics. Commons and Lords pulls back the curtain on both the upper House of Lords and the lower House of Commons to examine their unexpected inner workings.

Based on fieldwork within both Houses, this volume in the Haus Curiosities series provides a surprising twist in how relationships in each play out. The high social status of peers in the House of Lords gives the impression of hierarchy and, more specifically, patriarchy. In contrast, the House of Commons conjures impressions of equality and fairness between members. But actual observation reveals the opposite: while the House of Lords has an egalitarian and cooperative ethos that is also supportive of female members, the competitive and aggressive House of Commons is a far less comfortable place for women. Offering many surprises and secrets, this book exposes the sheer oddity of the British parliament system.
[more]

front cover of Commonsense Justice
Commonsense Justice
Jurors’ Notions of the Law
Norman J. Finkel
Harvard University Press, 2011

For the first time in our history, U.S. prisons house over a million inmates, enough to populate a city larger than San Francisco. Building prisons is the new growth industry, as the American public reacts to a perceived increase in violence and politicians take a hard line toward crime. But this eagerness to construct more prisons raises basic questions about what the community wants and will tolerate and what the Supreme Court will sanction.

In this timely book, Norman Finkel looks at the relationship between the “law on the books,” as set down in the Constitution and developed in cases and decisions, and what he calls “commonsense justice,” the ordinary citizen’s notions of what is just and fair. Law is an essentially human endeavor, a collection of psychological theories about why people think, feel, and behave as they do, and when and why we should find some of them blameworthy and punishable. But is it independent of community sentiment, as some would contend? Or, as Finkel suggests, do juries bring the community’s judgment to bear on the moral blameworthiness of the defendant? When jurors decide that the law is unfair, or the punishment inappropriate for a particular defendant, they have sometimes nullified the law.

Nullification represents the jury’s desire not to defeat but “to perfect and complete” the law. It is the “no confidence” vote of commonsense justice refusing to follow the path the law has marked out—and pointing to a new path based on what seem to be more just grounds. Finkel brings to life the story behind the jury and judicial decisions, interweaving anecdotes, case law, and social science research to present a balanced and comprehensive view of important legal and social policy issues.

[more]

front cover of Commonwealth
Commonwealth
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
Harvard University Press, 2009

When Empire appeared in 2000, it defined the political and economic challenges of the era of globalization and, thrillingly, found in them possibilities for new and more democratic forms of social organization. Now, with Commonwealth, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri conclude the trilogy begun with Empire and continued in Multitude, proposing an ethics of freedom for living in our common world and articulating a possible constitution for our common wealth.

Drawing on scenarios from around the globe and elucidating the themes that unite them, Hardt and Negri focus on the logic of institutions and the models of governance adequate to our understanding of a global commonwealth. They argue for the idea of the “common” to replace the opposition of private and public and the politics predicated on that opposition. Ultimately, they articulate the theoretical bases for what they call “governing the revolution.”

Though this book functions as an extension and a completion of a sustained line of Hardt and Negri’s thought, it also stands alone and is entirely accessible to readers who are not familiar with the previous works. It is certain to appeal to, challenge, and enrich the thinking of anyone interested in questions of politics and globalization.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Commonwealth
A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774–1861, Revised Edition
Oscar Handlin and Mary Flug Handlin
Harvard University Press

Commonwealth, when first published in 1947, was a pioneer effort to investigate the historical role of government in the American economy. It revealed for the first time the importance of political action in the development of the American free enterprise system. The present edition has been revised by the authors to take into account the research of the past two decades. Focusing on Massachusetts as a key state, Oscar and Mary Flug Handlin describe the changes in the ways the government dealt with the economy from the period of independence to the Civil War, and they analyze the social groups whose interests and ideas influenced the character of those changes.

The Handlins have re-examined both their original conclusions and the procedures by which they arrived at their formulation of the problem. They have not found it necessary to make substantial textual revisions, for both their research methods and their conclusions have stood the test of time, and their basic concepts have already been incorporated into the literature. However, they have made stylistic changes and have drastically altered their documentation, rigorously pruning the old footnotes and incorporating into the new notes important recent books and articles which treat the political and economic history of the period and the local history of the stale.

There are two significant additions to the book: a new preface and a new appendix that explain the theoretical framework through a description and demonstration of the change in the authors’ attitude and focus during the course of their original research.

This revision of Commonwealth is as cogent as the original edition, more useful to scholars because of its incorporation of the latest scholarly literature, and, as a result of the reduction in documentation, more attractive to the general reader.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Commonwealth in the World, 3rd ed
J. D. B. Miller
Harvard University Press

In the present proliferation of blocs, alliances and pacts, the Commonwealth remains unique. Britain’s old Colonial Empire has grown into a free, loose grouping of equal sovereign states, each respecting to the full of the others’ independence. J. D. B. Miller examines the political structure of the Commonwealth and the international status of its members, and forecasts the circumstances in which it can me expected to endure.

He contends that the commonwealth is “a concert of convenience” to which each member belongs for reasons of interest rather than of sentiment. The countries of the Commonwealth find profit in the means of consultation and economic cooperation which it offers, and in the political field confine their discussions to the larger issues on which there is a measure of common interest.

The Commonwealth in the World is one of the few works which deals conveniently with these matters in a single volume. As an Australian, Miller views his subject with the necessary detachment; and his writing is as spirited as his judgments are sound.

[more]

front cover of Commonwealth of Compromise
Commonwealth of Compromise
Civil War Commemoration in Missouri
Amy Laurel Fluker
University of Missouri Press, 2020
In this important new contribution to the historical literature, Amy Fluker offers a history of Civil War commemoration in Missouri, shifting focus away from the guerrilla war and devoting equal attention to Union, African American, and Confederate commemoration. She provides the most complete look yet at the construction of Civil War memory in Missouri, illuminating the particular challenges that shaped Civil War commemoration. As a slaveholding Union state on the Western frontier, Missouri found itself at odds with the popular narratives of Civil War memory developing in the North and the South. At the same time, the state’s deeply divided population clashed with one another as they tried to find meaning in their complicated and divisive history. As Missouri’s Civil War generation constructed and competed to control Civil War memory, they undertook a series of collaborative efforts that paved the way for reconciliation to a degree unmatched by other states.

Acts of Civil War commemoration have long been controversial and were never undertaken for objective purposes, but instead served to transmit particular values to future generations. Understanding this process lends informative context to contemporary debates about Civil War memory.

 
[more]

front cover of The Communal Experience
The Communal Experience
Anarchist and Mystical Communities in Twentieth Century America
Laurence R. Veysey
University of Chicago Press, 1978
The original impulse for groups to separate from society and establish communities of their own was religious. Though the religious side of this drive toward separation remains strong, the last two centuries have seen the appearance of secular communities with a socialist or anarchist orientation. In The Communal Experience, nominated for a National Book Award in 1973, Laurence Veysey explores the close resemblances between the secular and religious forms of cultural radicalism through intensive observation of four little-known communities.

Veysey compares the history of secular communities such as the early Ferrer Colony and Modern School, of Shelton, New Jersey, with contemporary anarchist communities in New York, Vermont, and New Mexico. Religious communes—"Communities of Discipline"—such as the Vedanta monasteries of the early twentieth century are compared with contemporary mystical communities in New Mexico. Distinctions between the anarchist and the mystical groups are most obvious from their approach to communal life. As Veysey shows, anarchist communities are loose, unstructured, voluntaristic; the mystics establish more rigid life-styles, focus on spiritual leaders, and hold community a secondary goal to self-realization. In a new preface written for this Phoenix Edition, he describes his return to a New Mexican mystical community and the changes that have occurred in the six years since his last visit.
[more]

logo for University of Manitoba Press
Communal Solidarity
Immigration, Settlement, and Social Welfare in Winnipeg's Jewish Community, 1882–1930
Arthur Ross
University of Manitoba Press, 2019

front cover of Communicate as a Professional
Communicate as a Professional
Carel Jansen
Amsterdam University Press
Across a wide range of programs in international higher education, students prepare themselves for a career in their professional field. Learning how to communicate as a professional is an essential part of that preparation. No matter how diverse the possible professional situations are in which graduates will be employed, they are always expected to behave professionally in their communication - both within their own organization and beyond.In order to be able to adequately carry out their communication tasks, professionals must not only possess a large repertoire of knowledge and skills, but they also need to be able to deploy that repertoire accurately and appropriately in their communication. They have to make choices on what best suits the situation in which they communicate with others and the goals they want to achieve.Already during their training, students come across a variety of tasks that are largely new to them. For these tasks, too, they need a broad knowledge and skills repertoire from which they can make the right choices.
[more]

front cover of Communicating Faith
Communicating Faith
John Sullivan
Catholic University of America Press, 2011
This book enriches appreciation of the many ways that Christian faith is communicated. It casts light on the sensitivities, skills, and qualities necessary for the effective communication of faith, where justice is done both to the "seed" to be sown and to the "soil" being cultivated.
[more]

front cover of Communicating Global Change Science to Society
Communicating Global Change Science to Society
An Assessment and Case Studies
Edited by Holm Tiessen, Michael Brklacich, Gerhard Breulmann, and Rômulo S.C. Menezes
Island Press, 2007
National governments and research scientists may be equally concerned with issues of global environmental change, but their interests-and their timelines-are not the same. Governments are often focused on short-term effects and local impacts of global phenomena. Scientists, on the other hand, are loath to engage in speculation about the specific consequences of large-scale environmental trends.

How then can we translate scientific understanding of these trends into public policy?

Communicating Global Change Science to Society examines the growing number of instances in which governments and scientists have engaged in research projects in which the goal is to inform policy decisions. It assesses these experiences and suggests their implications for future collaborations.

The book begins with a discussion of interactions between science and policy, particularly as they relate to the broad significance of environmental change. It then addresses concerns that emerge from this discussion, including how scientific research results are communicated in democratic societies, the uses (and misuses) of scientific findings, and what the natural and social sciences could learn from each other.
[more]

front cover of Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia
Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia
A Practical Guide to Information Motion-Media
S. Martin Shelton
Southern Illinois University Press, 2004
Written for a broad audience of professional informational and corporate filmmakers, film students, technical writers, and clients, Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia: A Practical Guide to Information Motion-Media is an insider’s perspective on the informational media industry. With over thirty-five years of experience, award-winning filmmaker S. Martin Shelton presents his astute views on the state of the profession and offers sage, constructive advice for the successful design and production of information motion-media.

 

Forgoing discussions of technology, Shelton instead concentrates on the communication principles that can motivate an audience to achieve a particular goal—a goal that must be realistic, worthwhile, and appropriate. His inventive approach coalesces theory of the media with its philosophy, analysis, history, and application, as well as his own informed personal opinions. This valuable guide examines how to effectively encode information in motion-media by using in-depth communication analysis and pertinent filmic design. Throughout, Shelton emphasizes that kinetic visuals, rather than audio, are the defining elements of the best motion-media communication. Organized into five parts that can be used independently or in sequence, the volume frames key topics in the industry that collectively form a cohesive strategy for motion-media design and production. First, Shelton discusses the essence of the medium as a communication tool. In the second part, he addresses the forms and functions of motion-media. The third part details communication analysis and its application. Next, Shelton delves into script design, distribution, and career growth. Lastly, he offers advice on business aspects of the profession. Told from the vantage point of a seasoned expert, Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia is a “how to do it” book as well as a treatise on “why to do it.” Shelton’s narrative is complemented by twenty-six illustrations (including multimedia flowcharts, sample forms, and photographs of some of the great documentary filmmakers), a variety of script formats, and a listing of the all-time best documentary films.

[more]

front cover of Communicating Nature
Communicating Nature
How We Create and Understand Environmental Messages
Julia B. Corbett
Island Press, 2006
A broader and more comprehensive understanding of how we communicate with each other about the natural world and our relationship to it is essential to solving environmental problems. How do individuals develop beliefs and ideologies about the environment? How do we express those beliefs through communication? How are we influenced by the messages of pop culture and social institutions? And how does all this communication become part of the larger social fabric of what we know as "the environment"?

Communicating Nature explores and explains the multiple levels of everyday communication that come together to form our perceptions of the natural world. Author Julia Corbett considers all levels of communication, from communication at the individual level, to environmental messages transmitted by popular culture, to communication generated by social institutions including political and regulatory agencies, business and corporations, media outlets, and educational organizations.

The book offers a fresh and engaging introductory look at a topic of broad interest, and is an important work for students of the environment, activists and environmental professionals interested in understanding the cultural context of human-nature interactions.
[more]

front cover of Communicating Physics
Communicating Physics
The Production, Circulation, and Appropriation of Ganot's Textbooks in France and England, 1851–1887
Josep Simon
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011
WINNER OF THE MARC-AUGUSTE PICTET PRIZE, 2010

The textbooks written by Adolphe Ganot (1804–1887) played a major role in shaping the way physics was taught in the nineteenth century. Ganot's books were translated from their original French into more than ten languages, including English, allowing their adoption as standard works in Britain and spreading their influence as far as North America, Australia, India and Japan.

Simon's Franco-British case study looks at the role of Ganot's two textbooks: Traité élémentaire de physique expérimentale et appliquée (1851) and Cours de physique purement expérimentale (1859), and their translations into English by Edmund Atkinson. The study is novel for its international comparison of nineteenth-century physics, its acknowledgement of the role of book production on the impact of the titles and for its emphasis on the role of communication in the making of science.
[more]

front cover of Communicating Professionally
Communicating Professionally
A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians
Catherine Sheldrick Ross
American Library Association, 2013

logo for University of Chicago Press
Communicating the Infinite
The Emergence of the Habad School
Naftali Loewenthal
University of Chicago Press, 1990
At the end of the eighteenth century the hasidic movement was facing an internal crisis: to what extent should the teachings of Baal Shem Tov and Maggid of Mezritch, with their implicit spiritual demands, be transmitted to the rank-and-file of the movement? Previously these teachings had been reserved for a small elite. It was at this point that the Habad school emerged with a communication ethos encouraging the transmission of esoteric to the broad reaches of the Jewish world. Communicating the Infinite explores the first two generations of the Habad school under R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi and his son R. Dov Ber and examines its early opponents.

Beginning with the different levels of communication in the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid and his disciples, Naftali Loewenthal traces the unfolding of the dialectic between the urge to transmit esoteric ideas and a powerful inner restraint. Gradually R. Shneur Zalman came to the fore as the prime exponent of the communication ethos. Loewenthal follows the development of his discourses up to the time of his death, when R. Dov Ber and R. Aaron Halevi Horowitz formed their respective "Lubavitch" and "Staroselye" schools. The author continues with a detailed examination of the teachings of R. Dov Ber, an inspired mystic. Central in his thought was the esoteric concept of self-abnegation, bitul, yet this combined with the quest to communicate hasidic teachings to every level of society, including women.

From the late eighteenth century onwards, the main problem for the Jewish world was posed by the fall of the walls of the social and political ghetto. Generally, the response was either to secularize, or abandon altogether, traditional Judaism or to retreat from the threatening modern world into enclave religiosity; by stressing communication, the Habad school opened the way for a middle range response that was neither a retreat into elitism nor an abandonment of tradition. Based on years of research from Hebrew and Yiddish primary source materials, Communicating the Infinite is a work of importance not only to specialists of Judaic studies but also to historians and sociologists.
[more]

front cover of Communicating the Other across Cultures
Communicating the Other across Cultures
From Othering as Equipment for Living, to Communicating Other/Wise
Dr. Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager
University of Michigan Press, 2023
Whenever political and social decisions use categories of identity such as race, religion, social class, or nationality to distinguish groups of people, they risk holding certain groups as inferior and culturally “Other.” When people employ ideologies of imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, and classism, they position certain groups as superior or ideal/ized people. Such ideological positioning causes nations to take actions that isolate or endanger minoritized populations. This cultural Othering can lead to atrocities such as Native Americans being expelled from their native lands through the Trail of Tears, millions of Ukrainians starving to death during the Holodomor, or millions of Jews exterminated during the Holocaust. 

Communicating the Other across Cultures uses examples from the United States, Western Europe, and Russia to demonstrate historical patterns of Othering people, as well as how marginalized people fight back against dominant powers that seek to silence or erase them. Deeply ingrained in our society, cultural Othering affects information in history books, children’s education, and the values upheld in our society. By taking a closer look at historical and modern instances of Othering, Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager shows examples of how different societies created ideas of social and cultural superiority or inferiority, and how deeply they are ingrained in our current society. In everyday life—the cash in your pocket, the movies shown at your local theater, museum exhibits, or politician's speeches—certain cultural ideologies are consistently upheld, while others are silenced. By exposing the communicative patterns of those in power, Khrebtan-Hörhager then suggests alternative ways of thinking, communicating, and eventually being, that offer transformative solutions for global problems. 
[more]

front cover of Communicating the Word
Communicating the Word
Revelation, Translation, and Interpretation in Christianity and Islam
David Marshall, Editor. Afterword by Archbishop Rowan Williams
Georgetown University Press, 2015

Communicating the Word is a record of the 2008 Building Bridges seminar, an annual dialogue between leading Christian and Muslim scholars convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Featuring the insights of internationally known Christian and Muslim scholars, the essays collected here focus attention on key scriptural texts but also engage with both classical and contemporary Islamic and Christian thought. Issues addressed include, among others, the different ways in which Christians and Muslims think of their scriptures as the “Word of God,” the possibilities and challenges of translating scripture, and the methods—and conflicts—involved in interpreting scripture in the past and today.

In his concluding reflections, Archbishop Rowan Williams draws attention to a fundamental point emerging from these fascinating contributions: “Islam and Christianity alike give a high valuation to the conviction that God speaks to us. Grasping what that does and does not mean . . . is challenging theological work.”

[more]

front cover of Communicating with Brazilians
Communicating with Brazilians
When "Yes" Means "No"
By Tracy Novinger
University of Texas Press, 2004

Brazilians are gracious, friendly, fun-loving people, which makes their country a very inviting place to visit for pleasure or business. So great is their cordiality that Brazilians will say "yes" to almost any request—even when they actually mean "no"—which can be quite confusing for U.S. visitors who are used to a more direct style of communication. In fact, as Americans spend time in Brazil, they discover a number of cultural differences that can hamper their communication with Brazilians. To overcome these barriers, this book analyzes Brazilian culture and modes of communication and compares them with their American counterparts to help Americans learn to communicate successfully with Brazilians and vice versa.

To aid Americans in understanding the Brazilian perspective, Tracy Novinger presents a portrait of Brazil's history, racial fusion, economy, and contemporary lifestyles. She focuses in on many aspects of Brazilian culture, such as social organization and ranking systems; preconceptions, worldviews, and values; sexual behaviors and eating customs; thought patterns; nonverbal communication such as the use of time, space, gestures, touch, eye contact, rituals, etc.; and differences in Brazilian and American point-making styles when negotiating, persuading, and conversing. For quick reference, she concludes the book with a summary and checklist of the leading Brazilian cultural characteristics, as well as eight recommendations for enhancing intercultural communication.

[more]

front cover of Communication
Communication
Paula Bialski
University of Minnesota Press, 2018

On contemporary communication in its various human and nonhuman forms

Contemporary communication puts us not only in conversation with one another but also with our machinery. Machine communication—to communicate not just via but also with machines—is therefore the focus of this volume. Diving into digital communications history, Finn Brunton brings to the fore the alienness of computational communication by looking at network timekeeping, automated trolling, and early attempts at communication with extraterrestrial life. Picking up this fascination with inhuman communication, Mercedes Bunz then performs a close reading of interaction design and interfaces to show how technology addresses humans (as very young children). Finally, Paula Bialski shares her findings from a field study of software development, analyzing the communicative forms that occur when code is written by separate people. Today, communication unfolds merely between two or more conscious entities but often includes an invisible third party. Inspired by this drastic shift, this volume uncovers new meanings of what it means “to communicate.”  

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Communication among Social Bees
Martin Lindauer
Harvard University Press

front cover of Communication and Community
Communication and Community
Implications of Martin Buber's Dialogue
Ronald C. Arnett. Foreword by Maurice Friedman
Southern Illinois University Press, 1986

Martin Buber’s work suggests that real life begins with two individ­uals engaged in dialogue, not just taking care of one’s own needs as described in social Darwinism.

Arnett argues that the end of the age of abundance demands that we give up the communica­tive strategies of the past and seek to work together in the midst of limited resources and an uncertain future. Today’s situa­tion calls for an unwavering commitment to Buber’s “narrow ridge” concern for both self and community.

Arnett illustrates the narrow ridge definition of interpersonal communication with rich ex­amples. His vignettes demon­strate effective and ineffective approaches to human communi­ty. An effective approach, he makes clear, incorporates not only openness to others’ points of view but also a willingness to be persuaded.

[more]

front cover of Communication and Development
Communication and Development
A Study of Two Indian Villages
Y.V. Lakshmana Rao
University of Minnesota Press, 1966

Communication and Development was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

What role does communication play in the economic, social, and political development of a community? The results of the study reported here, based on comprehensive field work in two small villages in India, throw considerable light on that question, one which is of fundamental importance to those concerned with rates and patterns of growth in any developing country.

In this study, the term "communication" refers to a social process—the flow of information, the circulation of knowledge and ideas in society, the propagation and internalization of thoughts. It does not refer to the media or means of communication, such as electronics, roads and railways, or vehicles.

The two villages studied, both in South India, were at contrasting stages of development. One was becoming industrialized, while the other still clung to such traditional ways as the barter system. To carry out the field work for his study, Dr. Rao lived in these villages for several months, talking at length with the people, obtaining information about their attitudes, beliefs, and opinions, and observing them and their surroundings with a trained eye. He also checked official records for pertinent information. He analyzes his findings from a psychological and sociological standpoint and, in addition, provides an intimate description of the village life.

The book will be of particular interest to communications specialists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, and others concerned with studies of the developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

[more]

logo for Intellect Books
Communication and Discourse Theory
Collected Works of the Brussels Discourse Theory Group
Edited by Leen Van Brussel, Nico Carpentier, and Benjamin De Cleen
Intellect Books, 2019
This volume gathers the work of the Brussels Discourse Theory Group, a group of critical media and communication scholars that deploy discourse theory as theoretical backbone and analytical research perspective. Drawing on a variety of case studies, ranging from the politics of reality TV to the representation of populism, Communication and Discourse Theory highlights both the radical contingent nature and the hegemonic workings of media and communication practices. The book shows the value and applicability of discourse-theoretical analysis (DTA) within the field of media and communication studies.
[more]

front cover of Communication and Empire
Communication and Empire
Media, Markets, and Globalization, 1860–1930
Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike
Duke University Press, 2007
Filling in a key chapter in communications history, Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike offer an in-depth examination of the rise of the “global media” between 1860 and 1930. They analyze the connections between the development of a global communication infrastructure, the creation of national telegraph and wireless systems, and news agencies and the content they provided. Conventional histories suggest that the growth of global communications correlated with imperial expansion: an increasing number of cables were laid as colonial powers competed for control of resources. Winseck and Pike argue that the role of the imperial contest, while significant, has been exaggerated. They emphasize how much of the global media system was in place before the high tide of imperialism in the early twentieth century, and they point to other factors that drove the proliferation of global media links, including economic booms and busts, initial steps toward multilateralism and international law, and the formation of corporate cartels.

Drawing on extensive research in corporate and government archives, Winseck and Pike illuminate the actions of companies and cartels during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, in many different parts of the globe, including Africa, Asia, and Central and South America as well as Europe and North America. The complex history they relate shows how cable companies exploited or transcended national policies in the creation of the global cable network, how private corporations and government agencies interacted, and how individual reformers fought to eliminate cartels and harmonize the regulation of world communications. In Communication and Empire, the multinational conglomerates, regulations, and the politics of imperialism and anti-imperialism as well as the cries for reform of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth emerge as the obvious forerunners of today’s global media.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Communication and Imperial Control in China
Evolution of the Palace Memorial System, 1693–1735
Silas H. L. Wu
Harvard University Press, 1970

logo for Southern Illinois University Press
Communication and Litigation
Case Studies of Famous Trials
Janice Schuetz
Southern Illinois University Press, 1988

Examination of seven famous trials, each concluding with an evaluation of the trial by a lawyer, judge, law professor, or communication scholar.

The Washington Post coverage of the John Hinckley case preceding the trial demonstrates the effects media may have on a trial. The Haymarket riot trial serves as an example of opening statements in a storytelling form.

By analyzing the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Schuetz and Snedaker explain direct examination according to its purpose, legal rules, ordering of witnesses, verbal and nonverbal techniques of interrogation, and tactics for introducing evidence.

The cross-examination in the Sacco-Vanzetti case shows how advocates enhance or decrease their persuasiveness by adopting communication maneuvers. Closing arguments in the Rosenberg trial took the form of a refutative story with a dual persuasive and instructional content.

The Supreme Court appeal in the Sam Sheppard case demonstrates the procedures, form, content, and style of arguments of appellate briefs. The Chicago Eight trial is an example of trial as theatre.

[more]

front cover of Communication and the Human Condition
Communication and the Human Condition
W. Barnett Pearce
Southern Illinois University Press, 1989

Starting with the premise that we live in communication (rather than standing outside communication and using it for secondary purposes), Pearce claims that people who live in various cultures and historical epochs not only communicate differently but experience different ways of being human because they communicate differently.

This century, he notes, ushered in the "communication revolution," the discovery that communication is far more important and central to the human condition than ever before realized. Essential to the communication revolution is the recognition that multiple forms of discourse exist in contemporary human society. Further, these forms of discourse are not benign; they comprise alternative ways of being human.

Thus communication theory must encompass all that it "means to live a life, the shape of social institutions and cultural traditions, the pragmatics of social action, and the poetics of social order."

[more]

logo for University of Wisconsin Press
Communication and Women's Friendships
Parallels and Intersections in Literature and Life
Janet Doubler Ward
University of Wisconsin Press, 1993
Eleven original essays offer a variety of perspectives on the changing ways in which women's friendships have been viewed. The contributors discuss the fundamental values of women's friendships and communication in order to understand the many parallels and intersections between literature and life. This anthology suggests that women's friendships are to be greatly valued—indeed treasured —as significant parts of women's lives.
[more]

front cover of Communication, Control and Security Challenges for the Smart Grid
Communication, Control and Security Challenges for the Smart Grid
S.M. Muyeen
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2017
The Smart Grid is a modern electricity grid allowing for distributed, renewable intermittent generation, partly owned by consumers. This requires advanced control and communication technologies in order to provide high quality power supply and secure generation, transmission and distribution. This book outlines these emerging technologies.
[more]

front cover of Communication Convergence in Contemporary China
Communication Convergence in Contemporary China
International Perspectives on Politics, Platforms, and Participation
Patrick Shaou-Whea Dodge
Michigan State University Press, 2020
In a speech opening the nineteenth Chinese Communist Party Congress meeting in October 2017, President Xi Jinping spoke of a “New Era” characterized by new types of communication convergence between the government, Party, and state media. His speech signaled that the role of the media is now more important than ever in cultivating the Party’s image at home and disseminating it abroad. Indeed, communication technologies, people, and platforms are converging in new ways around the world, not just in China. This process raises important questions about information flows, control, and regulation that directly affect the future of US–China relations. Just a year before Xi proclaimed the New Era, scholars had convened in Beijing at a conference cohosted by the Communication University of China and the US-based National Communication Association to address these questions. How do China and the United States envision each other, and how do our interlinked imaginaries create both opportunities for and obstacles to greater understanding and strengthened relations? Would the convergence of new media technologies, Party control, and emerging notions of netizenship in China lead to a new age of opening and reform, greater Party domination, or perhaps some new and intriguing combination of repression and freedom? Communication Convergence in Contemporary China presents international perspectives on US–China relations in this New Era with case studies that offer readers informative snapshots of how these relations are changing on the ground, in the lived realities of our daily communication habits.
[more]

front cover of Communication Culture in a Digital Age
Communication Culture in a Digital Age
Being Seriously Relational
Cristian Mendoza
St. Augustine's Press, 2023
Why are human beings so attracted to information and communication technologies? Developments in this field have formed new social networks around these technologies and that seem to compete with pre-existing structures in human lives. Cristian Mendoza and Lluís Clavell confront this phenomenon and its effect on human happiness, but have no desire to condemn the trajectory of human reliance on communication technology. Rather, they see an opportunity to explore human nature at greater depths. Only in this way can our use of technology properly support human activity and not sabotage our grasp of reality. 

Mendoza and Clavell's treatment of this topic renders an important philosophical conversation about digital realities and how they can actually make human life more human. This book provides a framework for using human attraction to information and communication tech for human benefit. It can be done! The authors apply the work of old and new masters to help open the new horizons of communication technology wherein human beings can flourish.
[more]

front cover of Communication Ethics and Tenacious Hope
Communication Ethics and Tenacious Hope
Contemporary Implications of the Scottish Enlightenment
Ronald C. Arnett with Foreword by Thomas M. Lessl
Southern Illinois University Press, 2022
WINNER, 2022 National Communication Association Top Single-Author Book of the Year in the Communication Ethics Division!

Tenacious hope, the heart of a just and free society 
 
During the Enlightenment, Scottish intellectuals and administrators met the demands of profit and progress while shepherding concerns for self and other, individual and community, and family and work. Communication Ethics and Tenacious Hope captures the “unity of contraries,” offering the Scottish Enlightenment as an exemplar of tenacious hope countering the excesses of individualism. Ronald C. Arnett reveals two stories: the struggle between optimism and tenacious hope, and optimism’s ultimate triumph in the exclusion of difference and the reification of progress as an ultimate good. 
 
In chapters that detail the legacies of Lord Provost George Drummond, Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Reid, George Campbell, Adam Ferguson, and Sir Walter Scott, Arnett highlights the problematic nature of optimism and the ethical agency of tenacious hope. Arnett illustrates the creative union of education and administration, the ability to accept doubt within systems of knowledge and imagination, and an abiding connection to local soil. As principles of progress, free will, and capitalism swept Europe, proponents of optimism envisioned a world of consumerism and absolutes. In contrast, practitioners of tenacious hope embraced uncertainty and compassion as pragmatic necessities.
 
This work continues Arnett’s scholarship, articulating the vital importance of communication ethics. Those seeking to discern and support a temporal sense of the good in this historical moment will find in this timely work the means to pursue, hold, and nourish tenacious hope. This insightful theorization of the Scottish Enlightenment distills the substance of a just and free society for meeting dangerous and uncertain times. 
 
[more]

front cover of Communication Ethics in Dark Times
Communication Ethics in Dark Times
Hannah Arendt's Rhetoric of Warning and Hope
Ronald C. Arnett
Southern Illinois University Press, 2013

Renowned in the disciplines of political theory and philosophy, Hannah Arendt’s searing critiques of modernity continue to resonate in other fields of thought decades after she wrote them. In Communication Ethics in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt’s Rhetoric of Warning and Hope, author Ronald C. Arnett offers a groundbreaking examination of fifteen of Arendt’s major scholarly works, considering the German writer’s contributions to the areas of rhetoric and communication ethics for the first time.  

Arnett focuses on Arendt’s use of the phrase “dark times” to describe the mistakes of modernity, defined by Arendt as the post-Enlightenment social conditions, discourses, and processes ruled by principles of efficiency, progress, and individual autonomy. These principles, Arendt argues, have led humanity down a path of folly, banality, and hubris. Throughout his interpretive evaluation, Arnett illuminates the implications of Arendt’s persistent metaphor of “dark times” and engages the question, How might communication ethics counter the tenets of dark times and their consequences? A compelling study of Hannah Arendt’s most noteworthy works and their connections to the fields of rhetoric and communication ethics, Communication Ethics in Dark Times provides an illuminating introduction for students and scholars of communication ethics and rhetoric, and a tool with which experts may discover new insights, connections, and applications to these fields.

Top Book Award for Philosophy of Communication Ethics by Communication Ethics Division of the National Communication Association, 2013

[more]

front cover of Communication Incompetencies
Communication Incompetencies
A Theory of Training Oral Performance Behavior
Gerald M. Phillips
Southern Illinois University Press, 1991

Gerald M. Phillips draws on his twenty-five-year, five-thousand-client experience with the Pennsylvania State University Reticence Program to present a new theory of modification of “inept” communication behavior.

That experience has convinced Phillips that communication is arbitrary and rulebound rather than a process of inspiration. He demonstrates that communication problems can be described as errors that can be detected and classified in order to fit a remediation pattern. Regardless of the source of error, the remedy is to train the individual to avoid or eliminate errors—thus, orderly procedure will result in competent performance.

Inept communicators must be made aware of the obligations and constraints imposed by deep structures that require us to achieve a degree of formal order in our language, without which our discourse becomes incomprehensible.

[more]

front cover of Communication, Pedagogy, and the Gospel of Mark
Communication, Pedagogy, and the Gospel of Mark
Elizabeth E. Shively
SBL Press, 2016
Reflections on the relationship between research and teaching

Using Mark as a test case, scholars address questions like: How should my research and my approach to the text play out in the classroom? What differences should my academic context and my students' expectations make? How should new approaches and innovations inform interpretation and teaching? This resource enables biblical studies instructors to explore various interpretative approaches and to begin to engage pedagogical issues in our changing world.

Features:

  • Ideas that may be adapted for teaching any biblical text
  • Diverse perspectives from nine experts in their fields
  • Essays include tips, ideas, and lesson plans for the classroom
[more]

front cover of Communication Research into the Digital Society
Communication Research into the Digital Society
Fundamental Insights from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research
Theo Araujo
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
Media and communication have become ubiquitous in today’s societies and affect all aspects of life. On an individual level, they impact how we learn about the world, how we entertain ourselves, and how we interact with others. On an organisational level, the interactions between media and organisations, such as political parties, NGOs, businesses and brands, shape organisations’ reputation, legitimacy, trust and (financial) performance, as well as individuals’ consumer, political, social and health behaviours. At the societal level, media and communication are crucial for shaping public opinion on current issues such as climate change, sustainability, diversity, and well-being. Media challenges are widespread and include mis- and disinformation, the negative impact of algorithms on our information diets, challenges to our privacy, cyberbullying, media addiction, and unwanted persuasion, among many others. All this makes the study of media and communication crucial.

This book provides a broad overview of the ways in which people create, use, and experience their media environment, and the role of media and communication for individuals, organisations, and society. The chapters in the book were written by researchers from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. ASCoR is today the largest research institute of its kind in Europe and has developed over the past 25 years into one of the best communications research institutes in the world.
[more]

front cover of Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals
Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals
Susan K. Jacobson
Island Press, 2009
Whether you are managing wetlands, protecting endangered species, or restoring ecosystems, you need to be able to communicate effectively in order to solve conservation and resource management problems. Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals can help you do just that—it is a practical and inspiring book that provides user-friendly guidance on achieving conservation goals through effective communication.
Following introductory chapters that draw on research from communication, psychology, sociology, and education to highlight elements critical for effective communication, the book describes how to gather background information and target audiences, explains how public relations can influence attitudes and behaviors, and outlines how to design and conduct a communications campaign. In addition, it provides step-by-step guidance for using print, broadcast, and electronic mass media; demonstrates methods for developing public talks, interpretive brochures, exhibits, and trails; and explores long-term conservation education strategies for students and adults.
 
This second edition of a widely praised book, originally published in 1999, includes new material on working with stakeholders, volunteers, and other groups to multiply conservation success. It also expands on the use of electronic media with examples of conservation Web pages, blogs, e-newsletters, and other new media. The book’s citations have been updated to include a host of Web sites and other electronic sources useful for planning and implementing communication programs.
 
Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals is a valuable addition to the conservationist’s toolbox that will help scientists, managers, concerned citizens, and students communicate more effectively.
[more]

logo for Island Press
Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals
Susan K. Jacobson
Island Press, 1999

Community and public support are essential to the success of conservation and resource management programs. Often, the level of support received depends on whether or not the goals and importance of the program have been clearly explained to the public, the press, or policymakers. Without good communication, even the best programs are liable to fail.

Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals provides in-depth guidance on achieving conservation goals through better communications. It introduces communication approaches -- marketing and mass media, citizen participation, public information, environmental interpretation, and conservation education activities -- and offers scores of real-world examples and straightforward advice that will help conservationists develop the the skills they need to communicate effectively. Following an introductory chapter that provides an overview of the communication process, the book:

  • describes research techniques for gathering background information and targeting audiences
  • outlines the steps involved in developing a communications campaign
  • explains how to use mass media-from giving interviews to writing news releases and holding press conferences
  • provides examples for developing interpretive media for conservation
  • explores long-term conservation education strategies
  • presents program evaluation techniques to determine the level of success achieved, or to identify steps for improvement
Throughout, the author presents a rich storehouse of examples, guidelines, and planning tools for all kinds of communication challenges. Strategies and materials that have been used by organizations across the country -- from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to The Nature Conservancy, from Adirondack Park to Yellowstone National Park -- are featured, providing both inspiration and support for others involved with similar projects.

Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals is a much-needed contribution to the environmental literature that will play a vital role in helping scientists, managers, concerned citizens, and students to more effectively communicate their knowledge and concern about the environment, and to achieve greater professional and community success with their environmental campaigns.

[more]

front cover of Communication Technologies for Networked Smart Cities
Communication Technologies for Networked Smart Cities
Shree Krishna Sharma
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2021
One of the crucial challenges for future smart cities is to devise a citywide network infrastructure capable of effectively guaranteeing resource-efficient and reliable communications while managing the complexity of heterogeneous devices and access technologies. This edited book highlights and showcases state of the art research and innovations in 5G and beyond wireless communications technologies for connected smart cities. The main objectives of this work include the exploration of recent advances and application potentials of various communication technologies as promising enablers for future networked smart cities, the investigation of design-specific issues for the integration of different architectural components of smart cities, and addressing various challenges and identifying opportunities in terms of interoperability of potential solutions.
[more]

front cover of Communication Therapy
Communication Therapy
An Integrated Approach to Aural Rehabilitation
Mary June Moseley
Gallaudet University Press, 1996

This new book for students and professionals emphasizes a functional approach to aural rehabilitation refined during the past several years. It details the use of an integrated therapy strategy designed to meet a variety of needs for each client while simultaneously working on multiple communication skill areas. Particular care has been taken to address the different requirements of deaf and hard of hearing adolescents and adults, including information about the unique needs of the culturally Deaf population. Throughout this practical text, clinicians receive encouragement to learn American Sign Language to enhance communication with Deaf clients.

       Communication Therapy calls upon the expertise of various authorities well-versed in integrated therapy. They explain fully the state-of-the-art practices for all therapy areas, from global areas in communication therapy, to technology for aural rehabilitation, auditory skills, speechreading, speech and voice, pronunciation, and language skills, and telephone communication training. Case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the integrated approach, making this book a significant advancement in communication therapy.

[more]

front cover of Communications
Communications
An international history of the formative years
Russell W. Burns
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2004
Communications: An international history of the formative years traces the evolution of communications from 500 BC, when fire beacons were used for signalling, to the 1940s, when high definition television systems were developed for the entertainment, education and enlightenment of society. The book does not simply provide a chronicle of dates and events, nor is it a descriptive catalogue of devices and systems. Rather, it discusses the essential factors - technical, political, social, economic and general - that enabled the evolution of modern communications. The author has taken a contextual approach to show the influence of one discipline upon another, and the unfolding story has been widely illustrated with contemporary quotations, allowing the progress of communications to be seen from the perspective of the times and not from the standpoint of a later generation.
[more]

front cover of Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire
Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire
A Critical History
Burçe Çelik
University of Illinois Press, 2023
De-Westernizing the communications history of Turkey and its imperial predecessor

The history of communications in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey contradicts the widespread belief that communications is a byproduct of modern capitalism and other Western forces. Burçe Çelik uses a decolonial perspective to analyze the historical commodification and militarization of communications and how it affected production and practice for oppressed populations like women, the working class, and ethnic and religious minorities. Moving from the mid-nineteenth century through today, Çelik places networks within the changing geopolitical landscape and the evolution of modern capitalism in relationship to struggles involving a range of social and political actors. Throughout, she challenges Anglo- and Eurocentric assumptions that see the non-West as an ahistorical imitation of, or aberration from, the development of Western communications.

Ambitious and comprehensive, Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire merges political economy with social history to challenge Western-centered assumptions about the origins and development of modern communications.

[more]

front cover of Communicative Biocapitalism
Communicative Biocapitalism
The Voice of the Patient in Digital Health and the Health Humanities
Olivia Banner
University of Michigan Press, 2017
The Precision Medicine Initiative, Apple’s HealthKit, the FitBit—the booming digital health industry asserts that digital networks, tools, and the scientific endeavors they support will usher in a new era of medicine centered around “the voice of the patient.” But whose “voices” do such tools actually solicit? And through what perspective will those voices be heard? Digital health tools are marketed as neutral devices made to help users take responsibility for their health. Yet digital technologies are not neutral; they are developed from an existing set of assumptions about their potential users and contexts for use, and they reflect dominant ideologies of health, dis/ability, gender, and race. Using patient-networking websites, the Quantified Self, and online breast cancer narratives,  Communicative Biocapitalism examines the cultural, technological, economic, and rhetorical logics that shape the “voice of the patient” in digital health to identify how cultural understandings and social locations of race, gender, and disability shape whose voices are elicited and how they are interpreted.
[more]

front cover of The Communicative Body
The Communicative Body
Studies in Communicative Philosophy, Politics, and Sociology
John O'Neill
Northwestern University Press, 1989
This collection of essays on communicative theory and praxis from the eminent Merleau-Ponty scholar and translator John O'Neill explores the thesis that the human body is the exemplary ground of all other communicative processes.
[more]

front cover of A Communion of Friendship
A Communion of Friendship
Literacy, Spiritual Practice, and Women in Recovery
Beth Daniell
Southern Illinois University Press, 2003

Drawing on interviews and an array of scholarly work, Beth Daniell maps out the relations of literacy and spirituality in A Communion of Friendship: Literacy, Spiritual Practice, and Women in Recovery. Daniell tells the story of a group of women in “Mountain City” who use reading and writing in their search for spiritual growth. Diverse in socioeconomic status, the Mountain City women are, or have been, married to alcoholics. In Al-Anon, they use literacy to practice the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous in order to find spiritual solutions to their problems.

In addition, Daniell demonstrates that in the lives of these women, reading, writing, and speaking are intertwined, embedded in one another in rich and complex ways. For the women, private literate practice is of the utmost importance because it aids the development and empowerment of the self. These women engage in literate practices in order to grow spiritually and emotionally, to live more self-aware lives, to attain personal power, to find or make meaning for themselves, and to create community. By looking at the changes in the women’s reading, Daniell shows that Al-Anon doctrine, particularly its oral instruction, serves as an interpretive tool. This discussion points out the subtle but profound transformations in these women’s lives in order to call for an inclusive notion of politics.

Foregrounding the women’s voices, A Communion of Friendship addresses a number of issues important in composition studies and reading instruction. This study examines the meaning of literacy within one specific community, with implications both for pedagogy and for empirical research in composition inside and outside the academy.

[more]

front cover of Communism
Communism
A TLS Companion
Edited by Ferdinand Mount
University of Chicago Press, 1993
From the overthrow of the tsars until the sudden collapse of Soviet communism, the most influential Western analysts have reflected on and debated the rise and fall of communism in the pages of the TLS. The diverse opinions gathered in Communism: A TLS Companion reflect the succession of Western attitudes to the birth, growth, and death of communism.

Contributors to this volume include Isaac Deutscher, Eric Hobsbawm, Richard Pipes, Hugh Seton-Watson, Robert Conquest, Geoffrey Hosking, C. M. Woodhouse, Max Hayward, Leszek Kolakowski, Timothy Garton Ash, and many others of equal distinction. The volume is arranged in four sections covering the period leading to the Russian Revolution, the post-Revolution era of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin; the Soviet Union from World War II to 1968; and the final period of disillusionment and collapse.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Communism and China
Ideology in Flux
Benjamin I. Schwartz
Harvard University Press

front cover of Communism Day-to-Day
Communism Day-to-Day
State Enterprises in East German Society
Sandrine Kott
University of Michigan Press, 2014

First published in France in 2001 by Éditions Belin under the title Le communisme au quotidien, Sandrine Kott’s book examines how East German businesses and government carried out communist practices on a daily basis and how citizens and workers experienced the conditions created by the totalitarian state in their daily lives. Kott undertakes a social analysis of the Communist Party’s grasp on state enterprises and the limits of its power. She then analyzes the enterprises themselves and the social, generational, and gender tensions that had a profound impact on the lived experience of socialism. Finally, she considers the development and acceptance of a complex set of rituals and gift exchanges that masked latent conflicts while providing meaning to socialism’s role in ordinary life.

[more]

front cover of Communism in Mexico
Communism in Mexico
A Study in Political Frustration
By Karl M. Schmitt
University of Texas Press, 1965

The ease with which Cuba slipped into its relationship with Communism revived in the United States its recurring nightmare in which other Latin American countries, particularly Mexico, become satellites of Russia or Red China. But such an occurrence is most unlikely in Mexico, according to Karl Schmitt, former intelligence research analyst with the United States Department of State.

Communism in Mexico traces efforts during the early twentieth century to create a Soviet-style society in one of the largest and most strategically situated of the Latin American countries. Schmitt writes authoritatively of the Mexican Communist movement, tracing its development from an early and potentially powerful political-economic base to the increasingly fragmented and weakened collection of parties and front groups of the 1960s. He follows the various schisms and factional divisions to the mid-1950s, when the process of disintegration became most noticeable, and explores and analyzes in detail Communist attempts since then to establish unity among the many quarreling and frustrated groups of the now-splintered movement.

Three Communist parties in Mexico, a score of front groups, and numerous infiltration cells in non-Communist organizations such as student and labor groups, all recognize in a broad way a common and ultimate goal: the creation of a Soviet-style society. But their attempts at unity have consistently led only to further bickering and frustration. This period is subjected to a thorough study and analysis in an effort to understand and explain the Communists' lack of success. Schmitt presciently concludes that Communism's future in Mexico will be as cloudy as its past, and that the accelerating economy and improving social conditions there will serve to weaken the movement still further.

[more]

logo for Ohio University Press
Communism, Religion, and Revolt in Banten in the Early Twentieth Century
Mis Sea#86
Michael Williams
Ohio University Press, 1990

Twice in this century popular revolts against colonial rule have occured in the Banten district of West Java. These revolts, conducted largely under an Islamic leadership, also proclaimed themselves Communist. Islamic Communism is seemingly a paradox. This is especially the case when one considers that probably no religion has proved more resistant to Communist ideology than Islam.

Michael Williams here details the complicated history of the Bantenese revolts in the twentieth century and probes the ideological riddle of Islamic Communism. Modern history is replete with examples of regions with a long history of organizing themselves politically to resist intrusion on their territory, resources, and people. This book establishes that in Indonesia, the Bantenese were among the most practiced exponents of resistance.

[more]

front cover of The Communist and the Communist's Daughter
The Communist and the Communist's Daughter
A Memoir
Jane Lazarre
Duke University Press, 2017
In a letter to his baby grandson, Bill Lazarre wrote that "unfortunately, despite the attempts by your grandpa and many others to present you with a better world, we were not very successful." Born in 1902 amid the pogroms in Eastern Europe, Lazarre dedicated his life to working for economic equality, racial justice, workers' rights, and a more just world. He was also dedicated to his family, especially his daughters, whom he raised as a single father following his wife’s death. In The Communist and the Communist's Daughter Jane Lazarre weaves memories of her father with documentary materials—such as his massive FBI file—to tell her father's fascinating history as a communist, a Jew, and a husband, father, and grandfather.

Soon after immigrating to the United States as a young man, Lazarre began a long career as a radical activist, being convicted of sedition, holding leadership positions in the American Communist Party, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, organizing labor unions, testifying in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and resisting the FBI’s efforts to recruit him as an informant. Through periods of heroism and deep despair Lazarre never abandoned his ideals or his sustained faith in the fundamental goodness of people.

This is also the story of Jane as she grew up, married an African American civil rights activist, and became a mother and a writer while coming to terms with her father’s legacy. She recounts her arguments with her father over ideology, but also his profound influence on her life. Throughout this poignant and beautifully written work, Jane examines memory, grief, love, and conscience while detailing the sacrifices, humanity, and unwavering convictions of a man who worked tirelessly to create a brighter future for us all.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Communist China, 1955–1959
Policy Documents with Analysis
Robert R. Bowie and John King Fairbank
Harvard University Press
The years 1955–1959 in Communist China included striking fluctuations and successes for Mao Tse-tung’s Party, and the working out of the first Five-Year Plan for economic and agricultural development. Here analysis of domestic developments is supported by 48 documents—directives, speeches, and articles. The major Party pronouncements are given in full. The significance of each is clarified by prefatory comments indicating additional readings, and by the 41-page introductory essay. This newly integrated picture of five crucial years pioneers the use of documentation (as in Soviet studies) for dealing with Communist China.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Communist Controversy in Washington
From the New Deal to McCarthy
Earl Latham
Harvard University Press

front cover of The Communist Judicial System in China, 1927-1976
The Communist Judicial System in China, 1927-1976
Building on Fear
Qiang Fang
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Drawing on hundreds of newly released judicial archives and court cases, this book analyzes the communist judicial system in China from its founding period to the death of Mao Zedong. It argues that the communist judicial system was built when the CCP was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the GMD, meaning that the overriding aim of the judicial system was, from the outset, to safeguard the Party against both internal and external adversaries. This fundamental insecurity and perennial fear of loss of power obsessed the Party throughout the era of Mao and beyond, prompting it to launch numerous political campaigns, which forced communist judicial cadres to choose between upholding basic legal norms and maintaining Party order. In doing all of this, The Communist Judicial System in China, 1927-1976: Building on Fear fills a major lacuna in our understanding of communist-era China.
[more]

front cover of The Communist Party in Maryland, 1919-57
The Communist Party in Maryland, 1919-57
Vernon L. Pedersen
University of Illinois Press, 2001
This rare grass-roots account of American communism traces the rise and fall of Maryland's Communist Party from the time of the Russian Revolution to the McCarthy era. Drawing on sources including the central archives of the Communist Party of the United States of America, recovered from remote storage in Siberia in 1993, Vernon L. Pedersen presents a sharp challenge to revisionist views of American communism as a benign domestic movement detached from Soviet interests.
 
Bolsheviks in Baltimore charts the uneven transformation of Baltimore's fledgling Communists into underground revolutionaries in the 1920s. Pedersen documents the mercurial careers of local organizers, their devotion to the Soviet cause, and their efforts to convert the Party from a hodgepodge of ethnic groups to an effective instrument of class interests. He also tracks the public's changing perception of the Communists, from amused unconcern to alarm, and details how the Ober antisubversive law and the HUAC hearings of the 1950s dismantled the Party from without while planting seeds of paranoia that destroyed it from within.
 
Behind the public fear of a Communist conspiracy against the U.S. government, Pedersen finds a party fractured by conflicting agendas, ineffectual leadership, and unstable membership. However, he also uncovers new evidence that Communists in the United States, acting on Soviet orders, used their influence in unions and front groups to sway American foreign policy in ways that benefited the Soviet Union. He documents the consolidation of an espionage apparatus in Baltimore and demonstrates that while espionage activities may have involved only a few individuals, all Party members shared an attitude of willing support for the activities of the Soviet Union that made these covert practices possible.
 
Paying tribute to the fervor and the effort dedicated by the Maryland Communists, often at the expense of their own physical and financial well-being, to a cause that ultimately failed them, Bolsheviks in Baltimore assesses an ambiguous legacy of admirable social vision, haphazard international conspiracy, and fierce internal conflict.
 
[more]

front cover of Communist Posters
Communist Posters
Edited by Mary Ginsberg
Reaktion Books, 2017
From images of Vladimir Lenin promising “Land to the peasants!” to those of Mao Zedong declaring the Cultural Revolution, communist regimes have relied on powerful—and often beautifully wrought—artwork to ensure the successes of their revolutions. Because of their ease of distribution, posters in particular have figured as central vehicles of propaganda in nearly every communist nation. In this book, Mary Ginsberg offers the first truly global survey of the history and variety of communist poster art.
           
Enriched with essays by several experts in a variety of regions, this collection showcases an extraordinary variety of communist art coming from the Soviet Union, China, Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and several countries in Eastern Europe. Together they show how effectively posters were used as tools of mobilization, instruction, censure, debate, and manipulation of public thought and opinion. As this collection shows, posters were used not only to promote the authority of the state and its revolutionary ideals, they were also used as a means of revolutionary protest and ways of warning against the dangers of other political regimes, such as Nazism. By their nature, these posters are ephemeral, tied to time, place, and specific events, but many have had far-reaching and long-lasting impact, in no small part due to the astonishing craft and beauty they display. In fact, many of these posters have eventually found their way into museums, due to the strength of their designs.
           
Beautifully arrayed, the posters in this collection offer a comprehensive look at the broad range of visual works that have both expressed and fueled one of the most powerful political ideas of the modern era.
 
[more]

front cover of Communists and Community
Communists and Community
Activism in Detroit's Labor Movement, 1941-1956
Ryan S. Pettengill
Temple University Press, 2020

Communists and Community seeks to reframe the traditional chronology of the Communist Party in the United States as a means to better understand the change that occurred in community activism in the mid-twentieth century. Ryan Pettengill argues that Popular Front activism continued to flourish throughout the war years and into the postwar period. In Detroit, where there was a critical mass of heavy industry, Communist Party activists mobilized support for civil rights and affordable housing, brought attention to police brutality, sought protection for the foreign-born, and led a movement for world peace. 

Communists and Community demonstrates that the Communist Party created a social space where activists became effective advocates for the socioeconomic betterment of a multiracial work force. Pettengill uses Detroit as a case study to examine how communist activists and their sympathizers maintained a community to enhance the quality of life for the city’s working class. He investigates the long-term effects of organized labor’s decision to force communists out of the unions and abandon community-based activism. Communists and Community recounts how leftists helped workers, people of color, and other under-represented groups became part of the mainstream citizenry in America.

[more]

front cover of Communists in Harlem during the Depression
Communists in Harlem during the Depression
Mark Naison
University of Illinois Press, 2004

Winner of the Ralph Bunche Award, American Political Science Association

No socialist organization has ever had a more profound effect on black life than the Communist Party did in Harlem during the Depression. Mark Naison describes how the party won the early endorsement of such people as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and how its support of racial equality and integration impressed black intellectuals, including Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson.

This meticulously researched work, largely based on primary materials and interviews with leading black Communists from the 1930s, is the first to fully explore this provocative encounter between whites and blacks. It provides a detailed look at an exciting period of reform, as well as an intimate portrait of Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, at the high point of its influence and pride.

[more]

front cover of Communities and Crime
Communities and Crime
An Enduring American Challenge
Pamela Wilcox
Temple University Press, 2017

Social scientists have long argued over the links between crime and place. The authors of Communities and Crime provide an intellectual history that traces how varying images of community have evolved over time and influenced criminological thinking and criminal justice policy.

The authors outline the major ideas that have shaped the development of theory, research, and policy in the area of communities and crime. Each chapter examines the problem of the community through a defining critical or theoretical lens: the community as social disorganization; as a system of associations; as a symptom of larger structural forces; as a result of criminal subcultures; as a broken window; as crime opportunity; and as a site of resilience. 

Focusing on these changing images of community, the empirical adequacy of these images, and how they have resulted in concrete programs to reduce crime, Communities and Crime theorizes about and reflects upon why some neighborhoods produce so much crime. The result is a tour of the dominant theories of place in social science today.

[more]

front cover of Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest
Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest
New Perspectives and Case Studies
Robert J. Stokes
University Press of Colorado, 2019
Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest presents new research on human organization in the American Southwest, examining families, households, and communities in the Ancestral Puebloan, Mogollon, and Hohokam major cultural areas, as well as the Fremont, Jornada Mogollon, and Lipan Apache areas, from the time of earliest habitation to the twenty-first century. Using historical data, dialectic approaches, problem-oriented and data-driven analysis, and ethnographic and gender studies methodologies, the contributors offer diverse interpretations of what constitutes a site, village, and community; how families and households organized their domestic space; and how this organization has influenced researchers’ interpretations of spatially derived archaeological data.
 
Today’s archaeologists and anthropologists understand that communities operate as a multi-level, -organizational, -contextual, and -referential human creation, which informs their understanding of how people actively negotiate their way through and around community constraints. The chapters in this book creatively examine these interactions, revealing the dynamic nature of ancient and modern groups in the American Southwest. The book has two broad complementary themes: one focusing on household decision-making, identity, and structural relations with the greater community; the other concerned with community organization and integration, household roles within the community, and changes in community organization—violence and destabilization, coalescence and cooperation—over time.
 
Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest weaves a rich tapestry of ancient and modern life through innovative approaches that will be of interest not only to Southwestern archaeologists but to all researchers and students interested in social organization at the household and community levels.

Contributors: James R. Allison, Andrew Duff, Lindsay Johansson, Michael Lindeman, Myles Miller, James Potter, Alison E. Rautman, J. Jefferson Reid, Katie Richards, Oscar Rodriguez, Barbara Roth, Kristin Safi, Deni Seymour, Robert J. Stokes, Richard K. Talbot, Scott Ure, Henry Wallace, Stephanie M. Whittlesey
[more]

front cover of Communities and Law
Communities and Law
Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities
Gad Barzilai
University of Michigan Press, 2005
Communities and Law looks at minorities, or nonruling communities, and their identity practices under state domination in the midst of globalization. It examines six sociopolitical dimensions of community--nationality, social stratification, gender, religion, ethnicity, and legal consciousness--within the communitarian context and through their respective legal cultures.
Gad Barzilai addresses such questions as: What is a communal legal culture, and what is its relevance for relations between state and society in the midst of globalization? How do nonliberal communal legal cultures interact with transnational American-led liberalism? Is current liberalism, with its emphasis on individual rights, litigation, and adjudication, sufficient to protect pluralism and multiculturalism? Why should democracies encourage the collective rights of nonruling communities and protect nonliberal communal cultures in principle and in practice? He looks at Arab-Palestinians, feminists, and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel as examples of the types of communities discussed. Communities and Law contributes to our understanding of the severe tensions between democracies, on the one hand, and the challenge of their minority communities, on the other, and suggests a path toward resolving the resulting critical issues.
Gad Barzilai is Professor of Political Science and Law and Co-Director of the Law, Politics and Society Program, Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University.
[more]

front cover of Communities and The Environment
Communities and The Environment
Ethnicity, Gender, and the State in Community-Based Conservation
Agrawal, Arun
Rutgers University Press, 2001

For years environmentalists thought natural resources could be best protected by national legislation. But the poor outcomes of this top-down policy have led conservation professionals today to regard local communities as the agents of conservation efforts. According to a recent survey, more than fifty countries report that they pursue partnerships with local communities in an effort to protect their forests. Despite the recent popularity of a community-based approach, the concept of community rarely receives the attention it should get from those concerned with resource management. This balanced volume redresses the situation, demonstrating both the promise and the potential dangers of community action.

Although the contributors advocate community-based conservation, they examine the record with a critical eye. They pay attention to the concrete political contexts in which communities emerge and operate. Understanding the nature of community requires understanding the internal politics of local regions and their relationship to external forces and actors. Especially critical are issues related to ethnicity, gender, and the state.

[more]

front cover of Communities in Dispute
Communities in Dispute
Current Scholarship on the Johannine Epistles
R. Alan Culpepper
SBL Press, 2014

Presenting the best work on the Johannine Epistles from a world-class gathering of scholars

This anthology includes papers presented at the McAfee School of Theology Symposium on the Johannine Epistles (2010). Contributions on the relationship between the Gospel of John and the Letters of John, Johannine theology and ethics, the concept of the Antichrist, and the role of the elder round out the collection. This is a must-have book for libraries and New Testament scholars.

Features:

  • Introductory essay places the collection in context
  • Articles engage the work of Raymond Brown and J. Louis Martyn
  • Sixteen essays from the Book of Psalms Consultation group and invited scholars
[more]

front cover of Communities In Economic Crisis
Communities In Economic Crisis
edited by John Gaventa, Barbara Ellen Smith and Alex Willingham
Temple University Press, 1990

Hard times are no stranger to the people of Appalachia and the South. Earlier books have documented the low wages of the textile industry, boom-and-bust cycles of coal mining, and debt peonage of Southern agriculture that have established a heritage of poverty that endures. This book is a unique collection of essays by people who are actively involved in the efforts to challenge economic injustice in these regions and to empower the residents to build democratic alternatives.


In the series Labor and Social Change, edited by Paula Rayman and Carmen Sirianni.

[more]

front cover of Communities of Death
Communities of Death
Whitman, Poe, and the American Culture of Mourning
Adam C. Bradford
University of Missouri Press, 2014
To 21st century readers, 19th century depictions of death look macabre if not maudlin—the mourning portraits and quilts, the postmortem daguerreotypes, and the memorial jewelry now hopelessly, if not morbidly, distressing. Yet this sentimental culture of mourning and memorializing provided opportunities to the bereaved to assert deeply held beliefs, forge social connections, and advocate for social and political change. This culture also permeated the literature of the day, especially the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. In Communities of Death, Adam C. Bradford explores the ways in which the ideas, rituals, and practices of mourning were central to the work of both authors.
 
While both Poe and Whitman were heavily influenced by the mourning culture of their time, their use of it differed. Poe focused on the tendency of mourners to cling to anything that could remind them of their lost loved ones; Whitman focused not on the mourner but on the soul’s immortality, positing an inevitable reunion. Yet Whitman repeatedly testified that Poe’s Gothic and macabre literature played a central role in spurring him to produce the transcendent Leaves of Grass.
 
By unveiling a heretofore marginalized literary relationship between Poe and Whitman, Bradford rewrites our understanding of these authors and suggests a more intimate relationship among sentimentalism, romanticism, and transcendentalism than has previously been recognized. Bradford’s insights into the culture and lives of Poe and Whitman will change readers’ understanding of both literary icons.
[more]

front cover of Communities of Discourse
Communities of Discourse
Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism
Robert Wuthnow
Harvard University Press, 1989
Sociologist Robert Wuthnow notes remarkable similarities in the social conditions surrounding three of the greatest challenges to the status quo in the development of modern society—the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the rise of Marxist socialism.
[more]

front cover of Communities of Health Care Justice
Communities of Health Care Justice
Galarneau, Charlene
Rutgers University Press, 2016
The factions debating health care reform in the United States have gravitated toward one of two positions: that just health care is an individual responsibility or that it must be regarded as a national concern. Both arguments overlook a third possibility: that justice in health care is multilayered and requires the participation of multiple and diverse communities. 
 
Communities of Health Care Justice makes a powerful ethical argument for treating communities as critical moral actors that play key roles in defining and upholding just health policy. Drawing together the key community dimensions of health care, and demonstrating their neglect in most prominent theories of health care justice, Charlene Galarneau postulates the ethical norms of community justice. In the process, she proposes that while the subnational communities of health care justice are defined by shared place, including those bound by culture, religion, gender, and race that together they define justice. 
 
As she constructs her innovative theorization of health care justice, Galarneau also reveals its firm grounding in the work of real-world health policy and community advocates. Communities of Health Care Justice not only strives to imagine a new framework of just health care, but also to show how elements of this framework exist in current health policy, and to outline the systemic, conceptual, and structural changes required to put these justice norms into fuller practice.
 
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Communities of Honor and Love in Henry James
Manfred Mackenzie
Harvard University Press, 1976

Here is a study of the essential Henry James, a study that delineates the development of his imagination, not in a strictly chronological way but by isolating patterns that can be applied to his work as a whole. Manfred Mackenzie analyzes James's social imagination, examining the kind of society and social structure he tended to portray and the motivations of his characters.

The experience of exposure, the author argues, is met with everywhere in James: identity and honor sought, won, or lost. Secrecy, or the use of secrecy in conspiracy, is a reaction to exposure, and cabal and conspiracy are consistently an element in the protagonists' quests. As James matured, however, he seemed to realize that identity and honor are ambiguous, and ultimately dehumanizing; a different set of values was needed. Mackenzie argues that a final plane of experience steadily emerges in James's work, that of love as manifested in the capacity to sacrifice identity and honor.

[more]

front cover of Communities of Informed Judgment
Communities of Informed Judgment
Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of Rationality
Frederick D. Aquino
Catholic University of America Press, 2004
An original contribution to Newman studies, the book has an interdisciplinary focus, drawing from recent work in social epistemology, virtue epistemology, and cognitive science. It also takes up issues relevant to the philosophy of religion, epistemology of religious belief, systematic theology, ecumenical dialogue, and studies in John Henry Newman.
[more]

front cover of Communities of Journalism
Communities of Journalism
A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers
David Paul Nord
University of Illinois Press, 2006
Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of journalism in the United States, David Paul Nord reveals how newspapers have intersected with religion, politics, reform, and urban life over nearly three centuries, His lively and wide-ranging discussion shows journalism to be a vital component of community. Ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press and how ordinary readers use journalism to form community attachments and engage in civic life.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter