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Activism!
Direct Action, Hacktivism and the Future of Society
Tim Jordan
Reaktion Books, 2002
Many schools of thought assert that Western culture has never been more politically apathetic. Tim Jordan's Activism! refutes this claim. In his powerful polemic, Jordan shows how acts of civil disobedience have come to dominate the political landscape. Because we inhabit such a quickly changing, high-tech and fragmented culture, the single-issue political movements and stable, conservative authorities of the past are continually being questioned. Traditional political battles have been replaced by the popular, collective practices of a new political activism. From Europe to the USA, from Australia to South America, from the Left to the Right, Jordan introduces us to the citizens who make up d-i-y culture: eco-activists, animal liberators, neo-fascists, ravers, anti-abortionists, squatters, hunt saboteurs and hacktivists. In his view, activism comprises a new ethics of living for the 21st century.
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After Mao
Chinese Literature and Society, 1978–1981
Jeffrey C. Kinkley
Harvard University Press, 1985

This is the first book in English to analyze the Chinese literary scene during the post-Mao thaw in government control. The seven contributors originally presented their research at a 1982 international conference at St. John’s University, New York, which was attended by scholars from America, Europe, and Asia, including participants from the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.

The special focus on popular literature—science fiction, love stories, detective fiction—reflects China’s new urban mass culture. These popular genres, plus the new “obscure” poetry, and the short-lived literary magazine Today are examined from an international comparative perspective and from a variety of viewpoints—literary, social, historical, political.

Those social and political realities that help determine what books are on hand in China for people to read are discussed. The final chapter presents data on periodical sales, book sales, library borrowings, and readers’ stated preferences in large cities, with emphasis on Canton. Such investigations into what the Chinese public was writing and reading in the years 1978–1981 throw new light on Chinese social attitudes, ideals, morals, and taste.

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Against Essentialism
A Theory of Culture and Society
Stephan Fuchs
Harvard University Press, 2001

Against Essentialism presents a sociological theory of culture. This interdisciplinary and foundational work deals with basic issues common to current debates in social theory, including society, culture, meaning, truth, and communication. Stephan Fuchs argues that many mysteries about these concepts lose their mysteriousness when dynamic variations are introduced.

Fuchs proposes a theory of culture and society that merges two core traditions--American network theory and European (Luhmannian) systems theory. His book distinguishes four major types of social "observers"--encounters, groups, organizations, and networks. Society takes place in these four modes of association. Each generates levels of observation linked with each other into a "culture"--the unity of these observations.

Against Essentialism presents a groundbreaking new approach to the construction of society, culture, and personhood. The book invites both social scientists and philosophers to see what happens when essentialism is abandoned.

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The Age of the Cathedrals
Art and Society, 980-1420
Georges Duby
University of Chicago Press, 1981
Recognizing that a work of art is the product of a particular time and place as much as it is the creation of an individual, Duby provides a sweeping survey of the changing mentalities of the Middle Ages as reflected in the art and architecture of the period.

"If Age of the Cathedrals has a fault, it is that Professor Duby knows too much, has too many new ideas and takes such a delight in setting them out. . . insights whiz to and fro like meteorites."—John Russell, New York Times Book Review
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Aging and Society
A Sociology of Age Stratification
Matilda White Riley
Russell Sage Foundation, 1972
Represents the first integrated effort to deal with age as a crucial variable in the social system. Of special interest to sociologists for whom the sociology of age seems destined to become a special field.
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Aging and Society
Aging and the Professions
Matilda White Riley
Russell Sage Foundation, 1969
Interprets the research findings on aging for professionals concerned with the prevention and treatment of problems associated with aging. Each chapter, written by an expert, deals with the field within the broad context of aging in contemporary society.
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Aging and Society
An Inventory of Research Findings
Matilda White Riley
Russell Sage Foundation, 1968
Selects, condenses, and organizes the entire body of social science research on human beings in their middle and later years. This volume summarizes empirically-tested generalizations from some three thousand research studies.
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Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy, Revolution, and Society
Alexis de Tocqueville
University of Chicago Press, 1980
Alexis de Tocqueville possessed one of the most fertile sociological imaginations of the nineteenth century. For more than 120 years, his uncanny predictive insight has continued to fascinate thinkers, and his writings have continued to influence our interpretations of history and society. His analyses of many issues remain relevant to current social and political problems. In this volume John Stone and Stephen Mennell bring together for the first time selections from the full range of Tocqueville's writings, selections that illustrate the depth of his insight and analysis.
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All-American Massacre
The Tragic Role of American Culture and Society in Mass Shootings
Edited by Eric Madfis and Adam Lankford
Temple University Press, 2023
What elements of contemporary American life contribute to the United States having the greatest number and highest share of public mass shootings around the globe? The editors and contributors to All-American Massacre seek to answer this question by exploring how masculinity, racism, politics, media, fame, education, gun culture, and mental health influence the causes of mass shootings in the United States.  

With a specific focus on exploring how American culture, institutions, and social structures influence the circumstances, frequency, and severity of mass shootings in the United States, All-American Massacre advances emerging theoretical perspectives and forges fresh approaches, new research questions, and innovative data and conclusions.  

Bringing together pioneering scholars, this groundbreaking compilation of research and analysis identifies the social roots of this insidious threat and prompts new reflections on how we can stop the seemingly endless cycle of horror and death.All-American Massacre helps clarify the unique nature and salience of mass shootings in American life.  

Contributors: Melanie Brazzell, Tristan Bridges, Ryan Broll, F. Chris Curran, Sarah E. Daly, Salvatore D’Angelo, James Densley, Tom Diaz, Scott Duxbury, Benjamin W. Fisher, Betsy Friauf, Emma E. Fridel, Celene Fuller, Daniel Gascón, Patrick J. Gauding, Brooke Miller Gialopsos, Simon Gottschalk, Donald P. Haider-Markel, Stephanie Howells, Cheryl Lero Jonson, Mark R. Joslyn, Jessie Klein, Aaron Kupchik, Alison J. Marganski, Melissa M. Moon, Kristen J. Neville, Jaimee Nix, Daniel Okamura, Patrick F. Parnaby, Jillian Peterson, Michael Phillips, Paul Reeping, Jason R. Silva, William A. Stadler, Lindsay Steenberg, Tara Leigh Tober, Jillian J. Turanovic, Abigail Vegter, Stanislav Vysotsky, Lacey N. Wallace and the editors
 
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Ancient Law, Ancient Society
Dennis P. Kehoe and Thomas A. J. McGinn, editors
University of Michigan Press, 2017
The essays composing Ancient Law, Ancient Society examine the law in classical antiquity both as a product of the society in which it developed and as one of the most important forces shaping that society. Contributors to this volume consider the law via innovative methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives—in particular, those drawn from the new institutional economics and the intersection of law and economics.

Essays cover topics such as using collective sanctions to enforce legal norms; the Greek elite’s marriage strategies for amassing financial resources essential for a public career; defenses against murder charges under Athenian criminal law, particularly in cases where the victim put his own life in peril; the interplay between Roman law and provincial institutions in regulating water rights; the Severan-age Greek author Aelian’s notions of justice and their influence on late-classical Roman jurisprudence; Roman jurists’ approach to the contract of mandate in balancing the changing needs of society against respect for upper-class concepts of duty and reciprocity; whether the Roman legal authorities developed the law exclusively to serve the Roman elite’s interests or to meet the needs of the Roman Empire’s broader population as well; and an analysis of the Senatus Consultum Claudianum in the Code of Justinian demonstrating how the late Roman government adapted classical law to address marriage between free women and men classified as coloni bound to their land.

In addition to volume editors Dennis P. Kehoe and Thomas A. J. McGinn, contributors include Adriaan Lanni, Michael Leese, David Phillips, Cynthia Bannon, Lauren Caldwell, Charles Pazdernik, and Clifford Ando.



 
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The Andes Imagined
Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity
Jorge Coronado
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009

In The Andes Imagined, Jorge Coronado not only examines but also recasts the indigenismo movement of the early 1900s.  Coronado departs from the common critical conception of indigenismo as rooted in novels and short stories, and instead analyzes an expansive range of work in poetry, essays, letters, newspaper writing, and photography.  He uses this evidence to show how the movement's artists and intellectuals mobilize the figure of the Indian to address larger questions about becoming modern, and he focuses on the contradictions at the heart of indigenismo as a cultural, social, and political movement. 

By breaking down these different perspectives, Coronado reveals an underlying current in which intellectuals and artists frequently deployed their indigenous subject in order to imagine new forms of political inclusion.  He suggests that these deployments rendered particular variants of modernity and make indigenismo representational practices a privileged site for the examination of the region's cultural negotiation of modernization.  His analysis reveals a paradox whereby the un-modern indio becomes the symbol for the modern itself.

The Andes Imagined offers an original and broadly based engagement with indigenismo and its intellectual contributions, both in relation to early twentieth-century Andean thought and to larger questions of theorizing modernity.

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Anne’s Bohemia
Czech Literature And Society, 1310-1420
Alfred Thomas
University of Minnesota Press, 1998

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Anton Pannekoek
Ways of Viewing Science and Society
Chaokang Tai
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960), prominent astronomer and world-renowned socialist theorist, stood at the nexus of the revolutions in politics, science and the arts of the early twentieth century. His astronomy was uniquely visual and highly innovative, while his politics were radical. Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society collects essays on Pannekoek and his contemporaries at the crossroads of political history, the history of science and art history.
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Architecture and Society
Selected Essays of Henry Van Brunt
Henry Van Brunt
Harvard University Press
William A. Coles has assembled many hitherto overlooked essays of Henry Van Brunt (1832–1903), one of the most scholarly and distinguished architects of the late nineteenth century. The editor presents the first full-scale introduction to Van Brunt's life and thought, developing particularly his theory that the classical tradition was much more forceful than was felt by contemporaries such as Louis Sullivan and Montgomery Schuyler. More than two hundred photographs and drawings illustrate buildings and designs mentioned in the monograph and in the twenty-two essays, providing a rich panorama of the architecture of the period.
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Art and Society in a Highland Maya Community
The Altarpiece of Santiago Atitlán
By Allen J. Christenson
University of Texas Press, 2001
A study of a major piece of modern Mayan religious art.
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