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4 books match the query 'Extremes'

cover of Affinities and Extremes: Crisscrossing the Bittersweet Ethnology of East Indies History, Hindu-Balinese Culture, and Indo-European Allure

Affinities and Extremes

Crisscrossing the Bittersweet Ethnology of East Indies History, Hindu-Balinese Culture, and Indo-European Allure

James A. Boon

University of Chicago Press, 1990

Examining representations of Balinese culture in complex contexts of Indonesia's colonial history, Hindu ritual practice as opposed to Islam, and comparative Indo-European hierarchies, Boon offers a powerful critique of doctrinal approaches to culture, religion, literature, politics, and the history of ideas and disciplines.
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cover of City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg

City of Extremes

The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg

Martin J. Murray

Duke University Press, 2011

City of Extremes is a powerful critique of urban development in greater Johannesburg since the end of apartheid in 1994. Martin J. Murray describes how a loose alliance of city builders—including real estate developers, large-scale property owners, municipal officials, and security specialists—has sought to remake Johannesburg in the upbeat image of a world-class city. By creating new sites of sequestered luxury catering to the comfort, safety, and security of affluent urban residents, they have produced a new spatial dynamic of social exclusion, effectively barricading the mostly black urban poor from full participation in the mainstream of urban life. This partitioning of the cityscape is enabled by an urban planning environment of limited regulation or intervention into the prerogatives of real estate capital.

Combining insights from urban studies, cultural geography, and urban sociology with extensive research in South Africa, Murray reflects on the implications of Johannesburg’s dual character as a city of fortified enclaves that proudly displays the ostentatious symbols of global integration and the celebrated “enterprise culture” of neoliberal design, and as the “miasmal city” composed of residual, peripheral, and stigmatized zones characterized by signs of a new kind of marginality. He suggests that the “global cities” paradigm is inadequate to understanding the historical specificity of cities in the Global South, including the colonial mining town turned postcolonial megacity of Johannesburg.

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cover of Ideologies in the Age of Extremes: Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914-1991

Ideologies in the Age of Extremes

Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914-1991

Willie Thompson

Pluto Press, 2010

This is a history of political ideologies during the period famously described by Eric Hobsbawn as ‘The Age of Extremes’ - from the First World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ideologies in the Age of Extremes introduces the key ideologies of the age; liberalism, conservatism, communism and fascism. Willie Thompson identifies the political influence of mass movements as a key feature. He uses a powerful approach that considers the different ideologies in relation to each other. This allows him to shows that they often emerged from a common root or merged into a common future, stealing each other’s clothes and reinventing themselves as the stark opposite of a competing ideology.

This sophisticated yet accessible analysis will be of great interest to students of 20th century history and political theory.

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cover of Land of Extremes: A Natural History of the Arctic North Slope of Alaska

Land of Extremes

A Natural History of the Arctic North Slope of Alaska

Alex Huryn and John Hobbie

University of Alaska Press, 2012

This book is a comprehensive guide to the natural history of the North Slope, the only arctic tundra in the United States. The first section provides detailed information on climate, geology, landforms, and ecology. The second provides a guide to the identification and natural history of the common animals and plants and a primer on the human prehistory of the region from the Pleistocene through the mid-twentieth century. The appendix provides the framework for a tour of the natural history features along the Dalton Highway, a road connecting the crest of the Brooks Range with Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean, and includes mile markers where travelers may safely pull off to view geologic formations, plants, birds, mammals, and fish. Featuring hundreds of illustrations that support the clear, authoritative text, Land of Extremes reveals the arctic tundra as an ecosystem teeming with life.

 
 
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