The Confounding Island

The Confounding Island PDF

Author: Orlando Patterson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0674243072

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The preeminent sociologist and National Book Award–winning author of Freedom in the Making of Western Culture grapples with the paradox of his homeland: its remarkable achievements amid continuing struggles since independence. There are few places more puzzling than Jamaica. Jamaicans claim their home has more churches per square mile than any other country, yet it is one of the most murderous nations in the world. Its reggae superstars and celebrity sprinters outshine musicians and athletes in countries hundreds of times its size. Jamaica’s economy is anemic and too many of its people impoverished, yet they are, according to international surveys, some of the happiest on earth. In The Confounding Island, Orlando Patterson returns to the place of his birth to reckon with its history and culture. Patterson investigates the failures of Jamaica’s postcolonial democracy, exploring why the country has been unable to achieve broad economic growth and why its free elections and stable government have been unable to address violence and poverty. He takes us inside the island’s passion for cricket and the unparalleled international success of its local musical traditions. He offers a fresh answer to a question that has bedeviled sports fans: Why are Jamaican runners so fast? Jamaica’s successes and struggles expose something fundamental about the world we live in. If we look closely at the Jamaican example, we see the central dilemmas of globalization, economic development, poverty reduction, and postcolonial politics thrown into stark relief.

American Education

American Education PDF

Author: Joel Spring

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-14

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1317531035

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Joel Spring’s American Education introduces readers to the historical, political, social, and legal foundations of education and to the profession of teaching in the United States. In his signature straightforward and concise approach to describing complex issues, Spring illuminates events and topics and that are often overlooked or whitewashed, giving students the opportunity to engage in critical thinking about education. In this edition he looks closely at the global context of education in the U.S. Featuring current information and challenging perspectives—with scholarship that is often cited as a primary source, students will come away from this clear, authoritative text informed on the latest topics, issues, and data and with a strong knowledge of the forces shaping of the American educational system. Changes in the 17th Edition include new and updated material and statistics on economic theories related to "skills" education and employability the conflict between a skills approach and cultural diversity political differences regarding education among the Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Green parties social mobility and equality of opportunity as related to schooling global migration and student diversity in US schools charter schools and home schooling

Dictatorship as Experience

Dictatorship as Experience PDF

Author: Konrad Hugo Jarausch

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9781571811820

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A decade after the collapse of communism, this volume presents a historical reflection on the perplexing nature of the East German dictatorship. In contrast to most political rhetoric, it seeks to establish a middle ground between totalitarianism theory, stressing the repressive features of the SED-regime, and apologetics of the socialist experiment, emphasizing the normality of daily lives. The book transcends the polarization of public debate by stressing the tensions and contradictions within the East German system that combined both aspects by using dictatorial means to achieve its emancipatory aims. By analyzing a range of political, social, cultural, and chronological topics, the contributors sketch a differentiated picture of the GDR which emphasizes both its repressive and its welfare features. The sixteen original essays, especially written for this volume by historians from both east and west Germany, represent the cutting edge of current research and suggest new theoretical perspectives. They explore political, social, and cultural mechanisms of control as well as analyze their limits and discuss the mixture of dynamism and stagnation that was typical of the GDR.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan PDF

Author: Thomas Barfield

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-03-25

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0691154414

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Traces the political history of Afghanistan from the sixteenth century to the present, looking at what has united the people as well as the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them.

Cultural Studies 50 Years On

Cultural Studies 50 Years On PDF

Author: Kieran Connell

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-09-30

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1783483946

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Stuart Hall conceptualized his time at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies as a series of interruptions. It was this fluidity that gave rise to Hall’s conception of cultural studies as a ‘moving target’, a fusion of a range of disciplinary approaches that was uniquely influenced by politics in the world beyond the academy. The political commitments of those at the Centre were wide-ranging and, from its embrace of collective ways of research and decision-making to its deployment of various strands of European Marxist theory, had a critical impact on the Centre’s working practices. Yet as the diverse work of many of these same scholars has shown, the political climate of the present-day is almost unrecognizable from that of the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, arguably the most productive period in the Centre’s history. Cultural Studies 50 Years On explores how the political, social and cultural contexts of the early 21st century influenced the object and method of doing cultural studies. In bringing together a historical reassessment of the Centre with present-day questions regarding the future of the field the aim is not to reduce cultural studies to the work of a single, now-defunct institution. Instead it aims to utilize what is a critical moment in the trajectory of the field in order to take stock of where it has come from and to explore where it might be going.

Logics of History

Logics of History PDF

Author: William H. Sewell Jr.

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-07-27

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0226749193

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While social scientists and historians have been exchanging ideas for a long time, they have never developed a proper dialogue about social theory. William H. Sewell Jr. observes that on questions of theory the communication has been mostly one way: from social science to history. Logics of History argues that both history and the social sciences have something crucial to offer each other. While historians do not think of themselves as theorists, they know something social scientists do not: how to think about the temporalities of social life. On the other hand, while social scientists’ treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, their theoretical sophistication and penchant for structural accounts of social life could offer much to historians. Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. In Logics of History, he reveals the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide.

Political Sociology and the People's Health

Political Sociology and the People's Health PDF

Author: Jason Beckfield

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-10

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0190492481

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A social epidemiologist looks at health inequalities in terms of the upstream factors that produced them. A political sociologist sees these same inequalities as products of institutions that unequally allocate power and social goods. Neither is wrong -- but can the two talk to one another? In a stirring new synthesis, Political Sociology and the People's Health advances the debate over social inequalities in health by offering a new set of provocative hypotheses around how health is distributed in and across populations. It joins political sociology's macroscopic insights into social policy, labor markets, and the racialized and gendered state with social epidemiology's conceptualizations and measurements of populations, etiologic periods, and distributions. The result is a major leap forward in how we understand the relationships between institutions and inequalities -- and essential reading for those in public health, sociology, and beyond.

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