Conspicuous Criticism

Conspicuous Criticism PDF

Author: Christopher Shannon

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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Originally published in 1996 and newly revised, Conspicuous Criticism is a ringing defense of the need for religion and tradition in contemporary society. Writing with moral passion and critical verve, Christopher Shannon offers a convincing indictment of the forces that isolate the individual in modern capitalist society and counters more than a century of efforts by modern intellectuals­ to displace tradition in favor of a humanism that actually diminishes humanity in the name of freeing its potential. Featuring in-depth analyses of the works of John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, C. Wright Mills, and others, Conspicuous Criticism is a call to reinstate traditional relations to God, nature, and the common good. Scholars in fields from American studies to intellectual history will be forced to grapple with Shannon's trenchant critique, which is well on its way to becoming a classic of Christian thought. "Conspicuous Criticism inspired a concern about the modern world that in the years since I've not been able to brush aside."--Eric Miller, First Things

Acts of Conspicuous Compassion

Acts of Conspicuous Compassion PDF

Author: Sheila C. Moeschen

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2013-06-24

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0472118862

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Illuminates the relationship between performance and the American charity movement

Veronica

Veronica PDF

Author: Roger Duvoisin

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Published: 2012-12-19

Total Pages: 46

ISBN-13: 0307804755

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Veronica, a hippopotamus who wants to stand out from the herd and be famous, travels to the big city where she indeed does stand out. Causing traffic jams, blocking sidewalks, and devouring a pushcart vendor’s vegetables in one big gulp, Veronia is arrested and jailed. How she discovers that there is no place like home is told with warm humor and sublimely mirthful illustrations that are great fun to share with a young child.

The Sum of Small Things

The Sum of Small Things PDF

Author: Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1400884691

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How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us all In today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption—like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children’s growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society “the aspirational class” and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide. Exploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. In that inflammatory classic, which coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” Veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils. Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. And these transformations influence how we all make choices. With a rich narrative and extensive interviews and research, The Sum of Small Things illustrates how cultural capital leads to lifestyle shifts and what this forecasts, not just for the aspirational class but for everyone.

Christian Critics

Christian Critics PDF

Author: Eugene McCarraher

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780801434730

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While all supported movements for the rights of labor, racial minorities, and women, some endorsed the military-industrial order that established the professional-managerial class as a dominant national force, while others favored a decentralized political economy of worker self-management. At the same time, McCarraher recasts the debate about the "therapeutic ethic" by tracing a shift, not from religion to therapy, but from religious to secular conceptions of selfhood.

Dear Mr. You

Dear Mr. You PDF

Author: Mary-Louise Parker

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-11-10

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1501107836

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This book "renders the singular arc of a woman's life through letters Mary-Louise Parker composes to the men, real and hypothetical, who have informed the person she is today. Beginning with the grandfather she never knew, the letters range from a missive to the beloved priest from her childhood to remembrances of former lovers to an homage to a firefighter she encountered to a heartfelt communication with the uncle of the infant daughter she adopted"--

Glimpses of Another Land

Glimpses of Another Land PDF

Author: Eric Miller

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2012-08-16

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1621894150

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In Glimpses of Another Land, Eric Miller takes the reader across the American landscape in quest of insight into our times. For those facing challenges and choices from all sides, Miller offers not analysis so much as reorientation--the kind of sharpened vision that redirects movement. An age featuring 9/11 as its defining moment surely requires probing reflection and judgment. Here Eric Miller, with an alert eye and keen voice, provides both.

The Price of Prestige

The Price of Prestige PDF

Author: Lilach Gilady

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-03-06

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 022643334X

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If wars are costly and risky to both sides, why do they occur? Why engage in an arms race when it’s clear that increasing one’s own defense expenditures will only trigger a similar reaction by the other side, leaving both countries just as insecure—and considerably poorer? Just as people buy expensive things precisely because they are more expensive, because they offer the possibility of improved social status or prestige, so too do countries, argues Lilach Gilady. In The Price of Prestige, Gilady shows how many seemingly wasteful government expenditures that appear to contradict the laws of demand actually follow the pattern for what are known as Veblen goods, or positional goods for which demand increases alongside price, even when cheaper substitutes are readily available. From flashy space programs to costly weapons systems a country does not need and cannot maintain to foreign aid programs that offer little benefit to recipients, these conspicuous and strategically timed expenditures are intended to instill awe in the observer through their wasteful might. And underestimating the important social role of excess has serious policy implications. Increasing the cost of war, for example, may not always be an effective tool for preventing it, Gilady argues, nor does decreasing the cost of weapons and other technologies of war necessarily increase the potential for conflict, as shown by the case of a cheap fighter plane whose price tag drove consumers away. In today’s changing world, where there are high levels of uncertainty about the distribution of power, Gilady also offers a valuable way to predict which countries are most likely to be concerned about their position and therefore adopt costly, excessive policies.

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