In the twentieth century Marxism challenged laissez-faire economics, psychoanalysis reinterpreted the processes of thought, and evolution discredited the idea of creation. These changes profoundly affected American Protestantism. Ferré examines the belief system that underlies what middle-class Protestants chose to read.
How does the Church function in the world? What is it called to do, and what does it actually do? Charles E. Curran explores the social mission of the U.S. Catholic Church from a theological perspective, analyzing and assessing four aspects: the importance of social mission, who carries it out, how it is carried out, and the roles that the Church and individual Catholics play in supporting these efforts.
In the early and mid-twentieth century the Catholic Church in the United States tended to focus its social mission on its own charities, hospitals, and schools. But the Second Vatican Council called the Church to a new understanding of social mission, deepening its involvement in and commitment to civic, social, and political life in the United States and abroad. Curran devotes particular attention to three issues that have reflected the Church's strong sense of social mission since that time: abortion, war and peace, and labor.
The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church describes the proper role of bishops, institutions, and movements in the Church, but insists that the primary role belongs to all the baptized members of the Church as they live out the social mission in their daily lives.
"A well-conceived and well-argued book that is essential reading for those interested in the study of community building." --Journal of American History
"This study is important for both frontier and urban historians. It is well written, thoroughly documented, and illustrated in an informative manner. One may hope that future studies of other nineteenth century American towns will be completed with the competence and style of this excellent volume." --The Old Northwest
"For one who has lived in Jacksonville as I have, reading this book stirred fond memories and answered lingering questions about this town. . . . As a capsule study of an unusual Illinois community renowned for its past, Doyle's book makes for fascinating reading." --Civil War History
Although there has been a resurgence of scholarly interest in Jane Addams, much of the recent literature has dwelt more on her extraordinary and pioneering life than on the philosophical contribution of her twelve books and hundreds of published articles. This study is the first book-length work to focus entirely on Addams as a philosopher, a moral and political theorist who was steeped in the classic American Pragmatist tradition but who transcended that tradition to emphasize the significance of gender, race, and class.
Exploring Addams's contribution to epistemology, ethics, and feminist theory, Maurice Hamington sets the intellectual framework for Addams's social philosophy by discussing her influences, her particular brand of feminism, and finally her unique analytical perspective, which she described as "sympathetic knowledge." The book also investigates how Addams applied her social philosophy to issues of politics, women's rights, prostitution, business ethics, education, and religion.
Addams's philosophical work remains relevant to current feminist ethical discourse, and The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams leads to an understanding of a cosmopolitan theorist who eschewed ideological stances in favor of intermediary steps toward social progress.
From reviews of the first edition:
"This is perhaps the best theoretically oriented book by a United States urban sociologist since the work of Firey, Hawley, and Sjoberg in the 1940s and 1950s.... Gottdiener is on the cutting edge of urban theoretical work today." —Joe R. Feagin, Contemporary Sociology
Since its first publication in 1985, The Social Production of Urban Space has become a landmark work in urban studies. In this second edition, M. Gottdiener assesses important new theoretical models of urban space—and their shortcomings—including the global perspective, the flexible accumulation school, postmodernism, the new international division of labor, and the "growth machine" perspective.
Going beyond the limitations of these and older theories, Gottdiener proposes a model of urban growth that accounts for the deconcentration away from the central city that began in the United States in the 1920s and continues today. Sociologists, political scientists, economists, geographers, and urban planners will find his interdisciplinary approach to urban science invaluable, as it is currently the most comprehensive treatment of European and American work in these related fields.
What happens when the allegedly value-free social sciences enter the national political arena? In The Social Sciences Go to Washington, scholars examine the effects of the massive influx of sociologists, demographers, economists, educators, and others to the federal advisory process in the postwar period. Essays look at how these social scientists sought to change existing policies in welfare, public health, urban policy, national defense, environmental policy, and science and technology policy, and the ways they tried to influence future policies.
Policymakers have been troubled that followers of postmodernism have questioned the legitimacy of scientific and political authority to speak for the desires of social groups. As the social sciences increasingly become expressions of individual preferences, the contributors ask, how can they continue to be used to set public policy for us all?
This collection is a useful resource for anyone studying the relationship between science and the government in the postwar years.
Many of us suspect that Social Security faces eventual bankruptcy. But the government projects its future finances using long outdated methods. Employing a more up-to-date approach, Jagadeesh Gokhale here argues that the program faces insolvency far sooner than previously thought.
To assess Social Security’s fate more accurately under current and alternative policies, Gokhale constructs a detailed simulation of the forces shaping American demographics and the economy to project their future evolution. He then uses this simulation to analyze six prominent Social Security reform packages—two liberal, two centrist, and two conservative—to demonstrate how far they would restore the program’s financial health and which population groups would be helped or hurt in the process.
Arguments over Social Security have raged for decades, but they have taken place in a relative informational vacuum; Social Security provides the necessary bedrock of analysis that will prove vital for anyone with a stake in this important debate.
Socializing Security examines the early movement for worker-security legislation in the United States. It focuses on a group of academic economists who became leading proponents of social insurance and protective labor legislation during the first decades of the twentieth century. These economists—including John R. Commons and Richard T. Ely—founded the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL). As intellectuals and political activists, they theorized about the social efficiency of security legislation, proposed policies, and drafted model bills. They campaigned vigorously for industrial safety laws, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and compulsory health insurance.
The AALL reformers were successful in some of their legislative campaigns, but failed in two of their most important ones, those for unemployment insurance and health insurance. In examining the obstacles that the reformers faced, David Moss highlights a variety of political and institutional constraints, including the constitutional doctrine of federalism and gender-biased judicial decisions.
The goal of the AALL reformers, Moss demonstrates, was not to relieve the poor, but rather to prevent workers and their families from falling into poverty as a result of accidents or illness. In favoring security over relief, economists in the progressive era defined and confirmed what has remained, for some eighty years, one of the essential values of American social policy. In concluding, Moss suggests that new policies may now be necessary in an economy in which falling wages and fewer jobs, rather than industrial hazards, are increasingly to blame for the precarious situation of the American worker.
This book is a reprint of the original edited volume first published in 2004. In thirty-one chapters, the edited volume documents the exciting period of the emerging interdisciplinary field of society and natural resource scholarship from 1986 to 2004. It was published in part to commemorate the tenth International Symposium on Society and Resources Management (ISSRM) in Keystone, Colorado. ISSRM has brought together natural resource professionals, social science researchers, non-government agencies, private sector organizations, and students on a biennial basis since 1986. The book presents the most significant contributions to the symposia hosted by Pennsylvania State University, Colorado State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Texas A&M University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Oregon State University, University of Missouri at Columbia, Western Washington University, and Indiana University. The first International ISSRM was held in Belize, Australia, and Italy and started a fruitful cross-continental exchange on society and natural resources showcased in this book.
Contributors: Jim Absher, Kathleen Andereck, Jill Belsky, John Bergstrom, Carter Betz, Alan Bright, Perry J. Brown, Tommy Brown, Mark Brunson, Rabel Burdge, Fred Buttel, KristinCheek, Chia-Kuen Cheng, Tony Cheng, David Cole, H Ken Cordell, Terry Daniel, Steven Daniels, Dan Decker, Robert Ditton, John Dwyer, Alan Ewert, Don Field, Myron Floyd, R Bruce Gill, Alan Graefe, Gary Green, Doug Jackson-Smith, Rebecca Johnson, Richard Knopf, Rick Krannich, Jessica Leahy, Xinran You Lehto, John Loomas, Al Luloff, Mike Manfredo, Robert Manning, Sarah McCaffrey, Stephen McCool, Yoon-Jung Oh, Joseph O'Leary, Carol Saunders, Steve Selin, Bruce Shindler, George Stankey, Bill Stewart, Vicky Sturtevant, Jonathan Taylor, Suzanne Taylor, Tara Teel, Brijesh Thapa, Gene Theodori, Carla Koons Trentelman, Jerry Vaske, Joanne Vining, Doug Whittaker, Dan Williams
Though the word “sociology” was coined in Europe, the field of sociology grew most dramatically in America. Despite that disproportionate influence, American sociology has never been the subject of an extended historical examination. To remedy that situation—and to celebrate the centennial of the American Sociological Association—Craig Calhoun assembled a team of leading sociologists to produce Sociology in America.
Rather than a story of great sociologists or departments, Sociology in America is a true history of an often disparate field—and a deeply considered look at the ways sociology developed intellectually and institutionally. It explores the growth of American sociology as it addressed changes and challenges throughout the twentieth century, covering topics ranging from the discipline’s intellectual roots to understandings (and misunderstandings) of race and gender to the impact of the Depression and the 1960s.
Sociology in America will stand as the definitive treatment of the contribution of twentieth-century American sociology and will be required reading for all sociologists.
Contributors:
Andrew Abbott, Daniel Breslau, Craig Calhoun, Charles Camic, Miguel A. Centeno, Patricia Hill Collins, Marjorie L. DeVault, Myra Marx Ferree, Neil Gross, Lorine A. Hughes, Michael D. Kennedy, Shamus Khan, Barbara Laslett, Patricia Lengermann, Doug McAdam, Shauna A. Morimoto, Aldon Morris, Gillian Niebrugge, Alton Phillips, James F. Short Jr., Alan Sica, James T. Sparrow, George Steinmetz, Stephen Turner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Immanuel Wallerstein, Pamela Barnhouse Walters, Howard Winant
"Joe Wilder set the table. His struggles made it easier for me and many others."--From the Foreword by Wynton Marsalis
Trumpeter Joe Wilder is distinguished for his achievements in both the jazz and classical worlds. He was a founding member of the Symphony of the New World, where he played first trumpet, and he performed as lead trumpet and soloist with Lionel Hampton, Jimmy Lunceford, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie. Yet Wilder is also known as a pioneer who broke down racial barriers, the first African American to hold a principal chair in a Broadway show orchestra, and one of the first African Americans to join a network studio orchestra.
In Softly, with Feeling, Edward Berger tells Wilder's remarkable story-from his growing up in working-class Philadelphia to becoming one of the first 1,000 black Marines during World War II-with tremendous feeling and extensive reminiscences by Wilder and his colleagues, including renowned Philadelphia-area musicians Jimmy Heath and Buddy DeFranco. Berger also places Wilder's experiences within a broader context of American musical and social history.
Wilder's modesty and ability to perform in many musical genres may have prevented him from achieving popular recognition, but in Softly, with Feeling, his legacy and contributions to music and culture are assured.
How a centuries-old architectural tradition reemerged as a potential solution to the political and environmental crises of the 1970s
Against the backdrop of a global energy crisis, a widespread movement embracing the use of raw earth materials for building construction emerged in the 1970s. Solar Adobe examines this new wave of architectural experimentation taking place in the United States, detailing how an ancient tradition became a point of convergence for issues of environmentalism, architecture, technology, and Indigenous resistance.
Utilized for centuries by the Pueblo people of the American Southwest and by Spanish colonialists, adobe construction found renewed interest as various groups contended with the troubled legacies of modern architecture and an increasingly urgent need for sustainable design practices. In this period of critical experimentation, design networks that included architects, historians, counterculture communities, government weapons labs, and Indigenous activists all looked to adobe as a means to address pressing environmental and political issues.
Albert Narath charts the unique capacities of adobe construction across a wide range of contexts, consistently troubling simple distinctions between traditional and modern technologies, high design and vernacular architecture. Drawing insightful parallels between architecture, environmentalism, and movements for Indigenous sovereignty, Solar Adobe stresses the importance of considering the history of the built environment in conjunction with architecture’s larger impact on the natural world.
What do contemporary American movies and directors have to say about the relationship between nature and art? How do science fiction films like Steven Spielberg's A.I. and Darren Aronofsky's π represent the apparent oppositions between nature and culture, wild and tame?
Steven Dillon's intriguing new volume surveys American cinema from 1990 to 2002 with substantial descriptions of sixty films, emphasizing small-budget independent American film. Directors studied include Steven Soderbergh, Darren Aronofsky, Todd Haynes, Harmony Korine, and Gus Van Sant, as well as more canonical figures like Martin Scorcese, Robert Altman, David Lynch, and Steven Spielberg. The book takes its title and inspiration from Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film Solaris, a science fiction ghost story that relentlessly explores the relationship between the powers of nature and art. The author argues that American film has the best chance of aesthetic success when it acknowledges that a film is actually a film. The best American movies tell an endless ghost story, as they perform the agonizing nearness and distance of the cinematic image.
This groundbreaking commentary examines the rarely seen bridge between select American film directors and their typically more adventurous European counterparts. Filmmakers such as Lynch and Soderbergh are cross-cut together with Tarkovsky and the great French director, Jean-Luc Godard, in order to test the limits and possibilities of American film. Both enthusiastically cinephilic and fiercely critical, this book puts a decade of U.S. film in its global place, as part of an ongoing conversation on nature and art.
"A radical approach to children's TV. . . . Seiter argues cogently that watching Saturday cartoons isn't a passive activity but a tool by which even the very young decode and learn about their culture, and develop creative imagination as well. Bolstered by social, political, developmental, and media research, Seiter ties middle-class aversion to children's TV and mass-market toys to an association with the 'uncontrollable consumerism'––and hence supposed moral failure––of working class members, women, and 'increasingly, children.' . . . Positive guidance for parents uncertain of the role of TV and TV toys in their children's lives."––Kirkus Reviews
"Sold Separately is about television and toys, and the various roles that they play in the lives of children and parents. In particular, Seiter examines toy advertising, both in print media and on television; TV commercials; toy-based video for girls, with an in-depth look at "My Little Pony"; action TV for boys, using "Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters" as her case study; and the stores where toys are sold, both Toys "R" Us and the more upscale shops . . . contains many provocative observations."––Women's Review of Books
"Ellen Seiter has a holiday message for yuppie parents who feel guilty shopping at Toys "R" Us. The mass-produced toys that dominate the chain's shelves need not be the enemy of every right-thinking parent. "Ghostbuster" figurines and "My Little Pony" can share the toy chest with those sensible wooden blocks."––Chronicle of Higher Education
"Emphasizing problems of socioeconomic class, gender, and race stereotyping, this study acknowledges the usual parental complaints about toys like Barbie and G.I. Joe, but insists that they do play an important role in children's culture, especially for working class families. A thought-provoking analysis."––Wilson Library Journal
"In this thought provoking study, Seiter reasonably urges parents and others to put aside their own tastes and to understand that children's consumer culture promotes solidarity and sociability among youngsters."––Publishers Weekly
"An important book for those desiring an overview of the toy industry's impact on consumer culture . . . [it] presents a fair and well-balanced view of the industry."––Kathleen M. Carson, associate editor, Playthings
"A refreshing, thoughtful, and insightful investigation of an enormously important subject––consumer culture for kids. . . . I can't recommend it highly enough."––Janice Radway, Duke University, author of Reading the Romance
What were the catalysts that motivated Mexican American youth to enlist or readily accept their draft notices in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam? In Soldados Razos at War, historian and veteran Steven Rosales chronicles the experiences of Chicano servicemen who fought for the United States, explaining why these men served, how they served, and the impact of their service on their identity and political consciousness.
As a social space imbued with its own martial and masculine ethos, the U.S. military offers an ideal way to study the aspirations and behaviors that carried over into the civilian lives of these young men. A tradition of martial citizenship forms the core of the book. Using rich oral histories and archival research, Rosales investigates the military’s transformative potential with a particular focus on socioeconomic mobility, masculinity, and postwar political activism across three generations.
The national collective effort characteristic of World War II and Korea differed sharply from the highly divisive nature of American involvement in Vietnam. Thus, for Mexican Americans, military service produced a wide range of ideological reactions, with the ideals of each often in opposition to the others. Yet a critical thread connecting these diverse outcomes was a redefined sense of self and a willingness to engage in individual and collective action to secure first-class citizenship.
Sports fans nationwide know Soldier Field as the home of the Chicago Bears. For decades its signature columns provided an iconic backdrop for gridiron matches. But few realize that the stadium has been much more than that. Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City explores how this amphitheater evolved from a public war memorial into a majestic arena that helped define Chicago.
Chicago Tribune staff writer Liam Ford led the reporting on the stadium’s controversial 2003 renovation—and simultaneously found himself unearthing a dramatic history. As he tells it, the tale of Soldier Field truly is the story of Chicago, filled with political intrigue and civic pride. Designed by Holabird and Roche, Soldier Field arose through a serendipitous combination of local tax dollars, City Beautiful boosterism, and the machinations of Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson. The result was a stadium that stood at the center of Chicago’s political, cultural, and sporting life for nearly sixty years before the arrival of Walter Payton and William “The Refrigerator” Perry.
Ford describes it all in the voice of a seasoned reporter: the high school football games, track and field contests, rodeos, and even NASCAR races. Photographs, including many from the Chicago Park District’s own collections, capture these remarkable scenes: the swelling crowds at ethnic festivals, Catholic masses, and political rallies. Few remember that Soldier Field hosted Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr., Judy Garland and Johnny Cash—as well as Grateful Dead’s final show.
Soldier Field captures the dramatic history of Chicago’s stadium on the lake and will captivate sports fans and historians alike.
This first political and social history of the American Legion in Illinois from its formation in 1919 to the onset of World War II focuses on the organization’s influence on the two political parties and on public opinion at the state and local levels. Gauging the singular influence of the organization in a particularly turbulent time in Illinois and American history, Thomas B. Littlewood argues that the local orientation of individual posts was probably more important to most Legionnaires than the activities of the organization’s national leaders. At the same time, he shows how the conflicts within the Legion mirrored those in the larger society.
Soldiers Back Home: The American Legion in Illinois, 1919–1939 traces the origins of the organization nationally and in Illinois, showing it to be the biggest and most politically committed of the several organizations of World War I veterans. First and foremost a fraternal association of men whose military service set them apart, it was also a social mechanism through which veterans contained and redirected their anger and alienation. Littlewood details how the organization developed quickly into a vigorous pressure group working to influence public policy on behalf of veterans and their families. Concentrating at first on the welfare of children who had lost their fathers in the war, the Legion later became involved in a variety of community service activities and served as a political training ground.
World War I was the first conflict to be fought by a largely conscripted army. When the soldiers returned from the war, labor unions were pressing hard to organize American workers in rapidly growing concentrations of industry. Business enjoyed generally high esteem, but the ensuing social and economic turbulence led to a shattering of civil order in some parts of Illinois. Prohibition, bootleggers, and organized crime gave way to the crumbling of the economy and the lean, hard years of the Depression. While these events were unfolding in Illinois, rural citizens resisted the rebalancing of power caused by massive migrations of citizens from farm to city by refusing to reapportion legislative districts.
Organized thematically, Soldiers Back Home traces the Legion’s impact on politics, community life, labor relations, race relations, and the struggle for veterans’ benefits in Illinois. Littlewood maintains that the Legion experienced significant divisions along regional lines, especially over the issues of the Ku Klux Klan and labor. Likewise, brutal sectional tensions grew between rural and urban populations. Littlewood looks at the role of the veteran in American politics and society, discussing the careers of famed Illinois leaders such as Scott Lucas, William Dawson, and Everett Dirksen and their involvement with the Legion. He also addresses issues of diversity and division within the organization.
Resisting the polemics of some contemporary interpretations of the American Legion and avoiding the tone of the sanitized official histories of the organization, Soldiers Back Home is a major contribution to the history of the interwar years—in Illinois and nationally—that will interest general readers and historians alike. The volume is augmented by thirteen illustrations.
The Somervell and Mier Expeditions of 1842, culminating in the famous "black bean episode" in which Texas prisoners drew white or black beans to determine who would be executed by their Mexican captors, still capture the public imagination in Texas. But were the Texans really martyrs in a glorious cause, or undisciplined soldiers defying their own government? How did the Mier Expedition affect the border disputes between the Texas Republic and Mexico? What role did Texas President Sam Houston play? These are the questions that Sam Haynes addresses in this very readable book, which includes many dramatic excerpts from the diaries and letters of expedition participants.
When crisis requires American troops to deploy on American soil, the country depends on a rich and evolving body of law to establish clear lines of authority, safeguard civil liberties, and protect its democratic institutions and traditions. Since the attacks of 9/11, the governing law has changed rapidly even as domestic threats—from terror attacks, extreme weather, and pandemics—mount. Soldiers on the Home Front is the first book to systematically analyze the domestic role of the military as it is shaped by law, surveying America’s history of judicial decisions, constitutional provisions, statutes, regulations, military orders, and martial law to ask what we must learn and do before the next crisis.
America’s military is uniquely able to save lives and restore order in situations that overwhelm civilian institutions. Yet the U.S. military has also been called in for more coercive duties at home: breaking strikes, quelling riots, and enforcing federal laws in the face of state resistance. It has spied on and overseen the imprisonment of American citizens during wars, Red scares, and other emergencies. And while the fears of the Republic’s founders that a strong army could undermine democracy have not been realized, history is replete with reasons for concern.
At a time when the military’s domestic footprint is expanding, Banks and Dycus offer a thorough analysis of the relevant law and history to challenge all the stakeholders—within and outside the military—to critically assess the past in order to establish best practices for the crises to come.
Popular conceptions hold that capitalism is driven almost entirely by the pursuit of profit and self-interest. Challenging that assumption, this major new study of American business associations shows how market and non-market relations are actually profoundly entwined at the heart of capitalism.
In Solidarity in Strategy, Lyn Spillman draws on rich documentary archives and a comprehensive data set of more than four thousand trade associations from diverse and obscure corners of commercial life to reveal a busy and often surprising arena of American economic activity. From the Intelligent Transportation Society to the American Gem Trade Association, Spillman explains how business associations are more collegial than cutthroat, and how they make capitalist action meaningful not only by developing shared ideas about collective interests but also by articulating a disinterested solidarity that transcends those interests.
Deeply grounded in both economic and cultural sociology, Solidarity in Strategy provides rich, lively, and often surprising insights into the world of business, and leads us to question some of our most fundamental assumptions about economic life and how cultural context influences economic.
Urza discusses the genesis of the National Basque Monument to the Basque Sheepherder that is located in Reno, Nevada. He also describes the competition held to determine the monument's design and the debates arising from the modern sculpture created by renowned Basque artist Nestor Basterrextea. Urza examines the arguments of those who favored the selection of a figurative, traditional symbol and those who preferred a modern, forward-looking symbol. He utilizes this discussion to explore the evolution of Basque ethnicity and its relationship to society.
A revealing account of the three main disciples of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, an essential figure in Orthodox Judaism in America
Orthodox Judaism is one of the fastest-growing religious communities in contemporary American life. Anyone who wishes to understand more about Judaism in America will need to consider the tenets and practices of Orthodox Judaism: who its adherents are, what they believe in, what motivates them, and to whom they turn for moral, intellectual, and spiritual guidance.
Among those spiritual leaders none looms larger than Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, heir to the legendary Talmudic dynasty of Brisk and a teacher and ordainer of thousands of rabbis during his time as a Talmud teacher at Yeshiva University from the Second World War until the 1980s. Soloveitchik was not only a Talmudic authority but a scholar of Western philosophy. While many books and articles have been written about Soloveitchik’s legacy and his influence on American Orthodoxy, few have looked carefully at his disciples in Torah and Talmud study, and even fewer at his disciples in Jewish thought and philosophy.
Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America is the first book to study closely three of Soloveitchik’s major disciples in Jewish thought and philosophy: Rabbis Irving (“Yitz”) Greenberg, David Hartman, and Jonathan Sacks. Daniel Ross Goodman narrates how each of these three major modern Jewish thinkers learned from and adapted Soloveitchik’s teachings in their own ways, even while advancing his philosophical and theological legacy.
The story of religious life and Judaism in contemporary America is incomplete without an understanding of how three of the most consequential Jewish thinkers of this generation adapted the teachings of one of the most consequential Jewish thinkers of the previous generation. Soloveitchik’s Children tells this gripping intellectual and religious story in a learned and engaging manner, shining a light on where Jewish religious thought in the United States currently stands—and where it may be heading in future generations.
The third book in Charles Bowden’s “accidental trilogy” that began with Blood Orchid and Blues for Cannibals, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing attempts to resolve the overarching question: “How can a person live a moral life in a culture of death?” As humanity moves further into the twenty-first century, Bowden continues to interrogate our roles in creating the ravaged landscapes and accumulated death that still surround us, as well as his own childhood isolation, his lust for alcohol and women, and his waning hope for a future. We witness post-Katrina New Orleans and terrorist-bombed Bali; we encounter our shared actions with the animal world and the desirous need for consumption; we see the clash and erosion of our physical and figurative borders, the savagery of our own civilization. A man of his time and out of time, Bowden seeks acceptance and a will to endure what may lie ahead.
A pioneering exploration of the unexamined roots and effect of racial sympathy within American politics.
There is racial inequality in America, and some people are distressed over it while others are not. This is a book about white people who feel that distress. For decades, political scientists have studied the effects of white racial prejudice, but Jennifer Chudy shows that white racial sympathy for Black Americans’ suffering is also a potent force in modern American politics. Grounded in the history of Black-white relations in America, racial sympathy is unique. It is not equivalent to a low level of racial prejudice or sympathy for other marginalized groups. Some White Folks reveals how racial sympathy shapes a significant number of white Americans’ opinions on policy areas ranging from the social welfare state to the criminal justice system. Under certain circumstances, it can also spur action—although effects on political behavior are weaker and less consistent, for reasons Chudy examines.
Drawing on diverse quantitative and qualitative evidence and integrating insights from multiple disciplines, Chudy explores the origins, importance, and complexity of racial sympathy, as well as the practical implications for political and movement leaders. A companion to the rich literature on prejudice, Some White Folks demonstrates the multifaceted role of race in American politics and public opinion.
The dramatic expansion of transracial and transnational adoption since the 1950s, Briggs argues, was the result of specific and profound political and social changes, including the large-scale removal of Native children from their parents, the condemnation of single African American mothers in the context of the civil rights struggle, and the largely invented "crack babies" scare that inaugurated the dramatic withdrawal of benefits to poor mothers in the United States. In Guatemala, El Salvador, and Argentina, governments disappeared children during the Cold War and then imposed neoliberal economic regimes with U.S. support, making the circulation of children across national borders easy and often profitable. Concluding with an assessment of present-day controversies surrounding gay and lesbian adoptions and the struggles of immigrants fearful of losing their children to foster care, Briggs challenges celebratory or otherwise simplistic accounts of transracial and transnational adoption by revealing some of their unacknowledged causes and costs.
We all hope that we will be cared for as we age. But the details of that care, for caretaker and recipient alike, raise some of life’s most vexing questions. From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, as an explosive economy and shifting social opportunities drew the young away from home, the elderly used promises of inheritance to keep children at their side. Hendrik Hartog tells the riveting, heartbreaking stories of how families fought over the work of care and its compensation.
Someday All This Will Be Yours narrates the legal and emotional strategies mobilized by older people, and explores the ambivalences of family members as they struggled with expectations of love and duty. Court cases offer an extraordinary glimpse of the mundane, painful, and intimate predicaments of family life. They reveal what it meant to be old without the pensions, Social Security, and nursing homes that now do much of the work of serving the elderly. From demented grandparents to fickle fathers, from litigious sons to grateful daughters, Hartog guides us into a world of disputed promises and broken hearts, and helps us feel the terrible tangle of love and commitments and money.
From one of the bedrocks of the human condition—the tension between the infirmities of the elderly and the longings of the young—emerges a pioneering work of exploration into the darker recesses of family life. Ultimately, Hartog forces us to reflect on what we owe and are owed as members of a family.
What do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all children—but all possible advantages for our own. So argues historian David Labaree in this provocative look at the way “this archetype of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do.”
Ever since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown, schools are extremely difficult to change. Labaree shows how the very organization of the locally controlled, administratively limited school system makes reform difficult.
At the same time, he argues, the choices of educational consumers have always overwhelmed top-down efforts at school reform. Individual families seek to use schools for their own purposes—to pursue social opportunity, if they need it, and to preserve social advantage, if they have it. In principle, we want the best for all children. In practice, we want the best for our own.
Provocative, unflinching, wry, Someone Has to Fail looks at the way that unintended consequences of consumer choices have created an extraordinarily resilient educational system, perpetually expanding, perpetually unequal, constantly being reformed, and never changing much.
From 1989 through 2002 there was an unprecedented surge in American sitcoms featuring explicitly Jewish lead characters, thirty-two compared to seven in the previous forty years. Several of these—Mad About You, The Nanny, and Friends—were among the most popular and influential of all shows over this period; one program—Seinfeld—has been singled out as the “defining” series of the nineties. In addition, scriptwriters have increasingly created “Jewish” characters, although they may not be perceived to be by the show’s audience, Rachel Green on Friends being only one example.
In Something Ain’t Kosher Here, Vincent Brook asks two key questions: Why has this trend appeared at this particular historical moment and what is the significance of this phenomenon for Jews and non-Jews alike? He takes readers through three key phases of the Jewish sitcom trend: The early years of television before and after the first Jewish sitcom, The Goldbergs’, appeared; the second phase in which America found itself “Under the Sign of Seinfeld”; and the current era of what Brook calls “Post- Jewishness.”
Interviews with key writers, producers, and “showrunners” such as David Kohan, (Will and Grace), Marta Kauffman (Friends and Dream On), Bill Prady (Dharma and Greg), Peter Mehlman and Carol Leifer (Seinfeld), and close readings of individual episodes and series provoke the inescapable conclusion that we have entered uncharted “post-Jewish” territory. Brook reveals that the acceptance of Jews in mainstream white America at the very time when identity politics have put a premium on celebrating difference reinforces and threatens the historically unique insider/outsider status of Jews in American society. This paradox upsets a delicate balance that has been a defining component of American Jewish identity.
The rise of the Jewish sitcom represents a broader struggle in which American Jews and the TV industry, if not American society as a whole, are increasingly operating at cross-purposes— torn between the desire to celebrate unique ethnic identities, yet to assimilate: to assert independence, yet also to build a consensus to appeal to the widest possible audience. No reader of this book will ever be able to watch these television programs in quite the same way again.
The first comprehensive study of the influence British programming had on American television.
The first comprehensive study of the influence British programming had on American television.
Between Emma Peel and the Ministry of Silly Walks, British television had a significant impact on American popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s. In Something Completely Different, Jeffrey Miller offers the first comprehensive study of British programming on American television, discussing why the American networks imported such series as The Avengers and Monty Python’s Flying Circus; how American audiences received these uniquely British shows; and how the shows’ success reshaped American television.Miller’s lively analysis covers three genres: spy shows, costume dramas, and sketch comedies. In addition to providing his close readings of the series themselves, Miller considers the networks’ packaging of the programs for American viewers and the influences that led to their acceptance, including the American television industry’s search for new advertising revenue and the creation of PBS.Something Completely Different concludes with a discussion of the American programs and genres that owed their existence to British progenitors. Miller convincingly argues that much of what came to define American television by 1980 was in fact British in origin, a contention that casts a new light on traditional discussions of American cultural imperialism.ISBN 0-8166-3240-5 Cloth £31.00 $44.95xxISBN 0-8166-3241-3 Paper £12.50 $17.95x208 Pages 17 black-and-white photos 5 7/8 x 9 JanuaryTranslation inquiries: University of Minnesota PressWeddings in the United States are often extravagant, highly ritualized, and costly affairs. In this book, Beth Montemurro takes a fresh look at the wedding process, offering a perspective not likely to be found in the many planning books and magazines readily available to the modern bride. Montemurro draws upon years of ethnographic research to explore what prenuptial events mean to women participants and what they tell us about the complexity and ambiguity of gender roles. Through the bachelorette party and the bridal shower, the bride-to-be is initiated into the role of wife by her friends and family, who present elaborate scenarios that demonstrate both what she is sacrificing and what she is gaining.
Montemurro argues that American society at the turn of the twenty-first century is still married to traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity and that prenuptial rituals contribute to the stabilization of gender inequalitiesA life of principles, service, and faith
This first biography of Glenn Poshard traces the life of a young man who rose from rural poverty in Southern Illinois to become a United States congressman and president of the Southern Illinois University system. This profound portrait unveils a life and career dedicated to making higher education affordable and improving the quality of life for the community of Southern Illinois.
Beginning with his childhood in a two-room home near Herald, Illinois and the early, tragic loss of his sister, this biography navigates Poshard’s service in the military, his time as a state senator and United States congressman, his run for governor, his years at Southern Illinois University, and the establishment of the Poshard Foundation for Abused Children. Intimacies of his personal life are disclosed, such as his struggles with and treatment for depression, his passion for education, and the lasting bonds he formed with his teachers. His unpopular decision to refuse PAC donations is also highlighted, along with the work that went into sponsoring the Illinois Wilderness Act, and his relationship with civil rights activist John Lewis. Glenn Poshard’s efforts for the Wilderness Act designated Southern Illinois’s famous Garden of the Gods as a National Wilderness Preservation System, which continues to attract visitors from around the world.
Poshard’s path from poverty was riddled with hardship, but his perseverance and family values ultimately allowed for longstanding personal and civic growth. From an admirable work ethic to a steadfast commitment to problem-solving, this biography illuminates the life and accomplishments of an impressive and generous leader.
In the midst of a crisis of democracy, we have much to learn from Walt Whitman’s journey toward egalitarian selfhood.
Walt Whitman knew a great deal about democracy that we don’t. Most of that knowledge is concentrated in one stunning poem, Song of Myself.
Esteemed cultural and literary thinker Mark Edmundson offers a bold reading of the 1855 poem, included here in its entirety. He finds in the poem the genesis and development of a democratic spirit, for the individual and the nation. Whitman broke from past literature that he saw as “feudal”: obsessed with the noble and great. He wanted instead to celebrate the common and everyday. Song of Myself does this, setting the terms for democratic identity and culture in America. The work captures the drama of becoming an egalitarian individual, as the poet ascends to knowledge and happiness by confronting and overcoming the major obstacles to democratic selfhood. In the course of his journey, the poet addresses God and Jesus, body and soul, the love of kings, the fear of the poor, and the fear of death. The poet’s consciousness enlarges; he can see more, comprehend more, and he has more to teach.
In Edmundson’s account, Whitman’s great poem does not end with its last line. Seven years after the poem was published, Whitman went to work in hospitals, where he attended to the Civil War’s wounded, sick, and dying. He thus became in life the democratic individual he had prophesied in art. Even now, that prophecy gives us words, thoughts, and feelings to feed the democratic spirit of self and nation.
This deeply felt memoir is a love letter to Washington, DC. Carol Lancaster, a third-generation Washingtonian who knew the city like few others, takes readers on a tour of the nation’s capital from its swamp-infested beginnings to the present day, with an insider’s view of the gritty politics, environment, society, culture, and larger-than-life heroes that characterize her beloved hometown. The former dean of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, a friend of presidents and dignitaries all over the globe, Lancaster colorfully describes the city’s three near-death experiences and the many triumphs and tribulations that emerged as the city took shape. Along the way she provides brief biographies of three of the most influential figures in the city’s history: urban designer Pierre Charles L’Enfant, whose vision for the city was realized only after his death; civic leader “Boss” Shepherd, whose strong-arm tactics cleaned up the downtown area and helped create the walking mall we know today; and controversial mayor Marion Barry, whose rise and fall and resurrection underscored the contemporary challenges of home rule.
Teeming with informative anecdotes and two dozen illustrations of landmarks and key characters, Lancaster’s memoir is a personal and passionate paean to the most powerful city in the world—from one of its most illustrious native daughters.
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