Jeffrey Barnouw's Books

Odysseus, Hero of Practical Intelligence

Deliberation and Signs in Homer's Odyssey

By: Jeffrey Barnouw

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Odysseus, Hero of Practical Intelligence

Deliberation and Signs in Homer's Odyssey

By: Jeffrey Barnouw

In dramatic representations and narrative reports of inner deliberation the Odyssey displays the workings of the human mind and its hero's practical intelligence, epitomized by anticipating consequences and controlling his actions accordingly. Once his hope of returning home as husband, father and king is renewed on Calypso's isle, Odysseus shows a consistent will to focus on this purpose and subordinate other impulses to it. His fabled cleverness is now fully engaged in a gradually emerging plan, as he thinks back from that final goal through a network of means to achieve it. He relies on "signs"--inferences in the form "if this, then that" as defined by the Stoic Chrysippus--and the nature of his intelligence is thematically underscored through contrast with others' recklessness, that is, failure to heed signs or reckon consequences. In Homeric deliberation, the mind is torn between competing options or intentions, not between "reason" and "desire." The lack of distinct opposing faculties and hierarchical organization in the Homeric mind, far from archaic simplicity, prefigures the psychology of Chrysippus, who cites deliberation scenes from the Odyssey against Plato's hierarchical tri-partite model. From the Stoics, there follows a psychological tradition leading through Hobbes and Leibniz, to Peirce and Dewey. These thinkers are drawn upon to show the significance of the conception of "thinking" first articulated in the Odyssey. Homer's work inaugurates an approach that has provoked philosophical conflict persisting into the present, and opposition to pragmatism and Pragmatism can be discerned in prominent critiques of Homer and his hero which are analyzed and countered in this study.

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394

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University Press of America

Published Date

ISBN 10

076183026X

ISBN 13

9780761830269

Something Completely Different

British Television and American Culture

By: Jeffrey S. Miller

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Something Completely Different

British Television and American Culture

By: Jeffrey S. Miller

Between Emma Peel and tire 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 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.

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282

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U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816632405

ISBN 13

9780816632404

Technology, Television, and Competition

The Politics of Digital TV

By: Jeffrey A. Hart

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Technology, Television, and Competition

The Politics of Digital TV

By: Jeffrey A. Hart

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the advanced industrial countries considered replacing the existing analogue television infrastructure with a new digital one. A key common feature to the debates over digital TV (DTV) in the United States, Western Europe and Japan was the eventual victory of the ideas of digitalism (the superiority of everything digital over everything analogue) and of digital convergence (the merging of computing, telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructures made possible by digitalization) in public debates over standards. Jeffrey Hart's book shows how nationalism and regionalism combined with digitalism to produce three different and incompatible DTV standards in the three regions, an outcome which has led to missed opportunities in developing the new technologies. Hart's book contributes to our understanding of relations between business and government, and of competition between the world's great economic powers.

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266

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Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1139442244

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9781139442244

Jews, God, and Videotape

Religion and Media in America

By: Jeffrey Shandler

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Jews, God, and Videotape

Religion and Media in America

By: Jeffrey Shandler

A pioneering examination of the impact of new communications technologies and media practices on the religious life of American Jewry Engaging media has been an ongoing issue for American Jews, as it has been for other religious communities in the United States, for several generations. Shandler’s examples range from early recordings of cantorial music to Hasidic outreach on the Internet. In between he explores mid-twentieth-century ecumenical radio and television broadcasting, video documentation of life cycle rituals, museum displays and tourist practices as means for engaging the Holocaust as a moral touchstone, and the role of mass-produced material culture in Jews’ responses to the American celebration of Christmas. Shandler argues that the impact of these and other media on American Judaism is varied and extensive: they have challenged the role of clergy and transformed the nature of ritual; facilitated innovations in religious practice and scholarship, as well as efforts to maintain traditional observance and teachings; created venues for outreach, both to enhance relationships with non-Jewish neighbors and to promote greater religiosity among Jews; even redefined the notion of what might constitute a Jewish religious community or spiritual experience. As Jews, God, and Videotape demonstrates, American Jews’ experiences are emblematic of how religious communities’ engagements with new media have become central to defining religiosity in the modern age.

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353

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NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814740871

ISBN 13

9780814740873

In the House of the Hangman

The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943-1949

By: Jeffrey K. Olick

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In the House of the Hangman

The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943-1949

By: Jeffrey K. Olick

The central question for both the victors and the vanquished of World War II was just how widely the stain of guilt would spread over Germany. Political leaders and intellectuals on both sides of the conflict debated whether support for National Socialism tainted Germany's entire population and thus discredited the nation's history and culture. The tremendous challenge that Allied officials and German thinkers faced as the war closed, then, was how to limn a postwar German identity that accounted for National Socialism without irrevocably damning the idea and character of Germany as a whole. In the House of the Hangman chronicles this delicate process, exploring key debates about the Nazi past and German future during the later years of World War II and its aftermath. What did British and American leaders think had given rise to National Socialism, and how did these beliefs shape their intentions for occupation? What rhetorical and symbolic tools did Germans develop for handling the insidious legacy of Nazism? Considering these and other questions, Jeffrey K. Olick explores the processes of accommodation and rejection that Allied plans for a new German state inspired among the German intelligentsia. He also examines heated struggles over the value of Germany's institutional and political heritage. Along the way, he demonstrates how the moral and political vocabulary for coming to terms with National Socialism in Germany has been of enduring significance—as a crucible not only of German identity but also of contemporary thinking about memory and social justice more generally. Given the current war in Iraq, the issues contested during Germany's abjection and reinvention—how to treat a defeated enemy, how to place episodes within wider historical trajectories, how to distinguish varieties of victimhood—are as urgent today as they were sixty years ago, and In the House of the Hangman offers readers an invaluable historical perspective on these critical questions.

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397

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226626385

ISBN 13

9780226626383

American Documentary Film

Projecting the Nation

By: Jeffrey Geiger

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American Documentary Film

Projecting the Nation

By: Jeffrey Geiger

Richard Wall Memorial Award 2012 - Finalist. What key concerns are reflected in documentaries produced in and about the United States? How have documentaries engaged with competing visions of US history, culture, politics, and national identity? This book examines how documentary films have contributed to the American public sphere - creating a kind of public space, serving as sites for community-building, public expression, and social innovation. Geiger focuses on how documentaries have been significant in forming ideas of the nation, both as an imagined space and a real place. Moving from the dawn of cinema to the present day, this is the first full-length study to focus on the extensive range and history of American non-fiction filmmaking. Combining comprehensive overviews with in-depth case studies, Geiger maps American documentary's intricate histories, examining the impact of pre- and early cinema, travelogues, the avant-garde, 1930s social documentary, propaganda, direct cinema, postmodernism, and 'new' documentary. Offering detailed close analyses and fresh insights, this book provides students and scholars with a stimulating guide to American documentary, reminding us of its important place in cinema history.

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288

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Edinburgh University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0748629467

ISBN 13

9780748629466

Culture, Society, and Democracy

The Interpretive Approach

By: Isaac Reed,Jeffrey C. Alexander

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Culture, Society, and Democracy

The Interpretive Approach

By: Isaac Reed,Jeffrey C. Alexander

This volume addresses the key question of the intersection of sociology and politics, and asks what a non-Marxist cultural perspective can offer the Left. Written by leading scholars, it develops new conceptions of social critique, new techniques of interpretive analysis, and new concepts for the sociology of democratic practice. It is a volume for the twenty-first-century, where global and local meet, when critical theory must examine its most fundamental presuppositions.

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199

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317261682

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9781317261681

An American Family

A Televised Life

By: Jeffrey Ruoff

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An American Family

A Televised Life

By: Jeffrey Ruoff

Before 1973, the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California, lived in the privacy of their own home. With the airing of the documentary An American Family, that "privacy" extended to every American home with a television. This book is the first to offer a close look at An American Family -- the documentary that blurred conventions, stirred passions, revised impressions of family life and definitions of private and public, and began the breakdown of distinctions between reality and spectacle that culminated in cultural phenomena from The Oprah Winfrey Show to Survivor.

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196

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U of Minnesota Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816635609

ISBN 13

9780816635603

Pretensions of Objectivity

Toward a Criticism of Biblical Criticism

By: Jeffrey L. Morrow

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Pretensions of Objectivity

Toward a Criticism of Biblical Criticism

By: Jeffrey L. Morrow

Modern historical biblical criticism, while having many strengths, often operates under the pretensions of objectivity, as if such scholarship were neutral and disinterested. Examining the history and roots of modern biblical scholarship shows that such objectivity is elusive, and was never intended by the method's earliest practitioners. Building upon his earlier work in Three Skeptics and the Bible and Theology, Politics, and Exegesis, Morrow continues this historical investigation into the political and philosophical roots of modern biblical criticism in Pretensions of Objectivity, in the hope of developing a criticism of biblical criticism and of making space for theological exegesis.

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144

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Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1532657404

ISBN 13

9781532657405

While America Watches

Televising the Holocaust

By: Jeffrey Shandler

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While America Watches

Televising the Holocaust

By: Jeffrey Shandler

The Holocaust holds a unique place in American public culture, and, as Jeffrey Shandler argues in While America Watches, it is television, more than any other medium, that has brought the Holocaust into our homes, our hearts, and our minds. Much has been written about Holocaust film and literature, and yet the medium that brings the subject to most people--television--has been largely neglected. Now Shandler provides the first account of how television has familiarized the American people with the Holocaust. He starts with wartime newsreels of liberated concentration camps, showing how they set the moral tone for viewing scenes of genocide, and then moves to television to explain how the Holocaust and the Holocaust survivor have gained stature as moral symbols in American culture. From early teleplays to coverage of the Eichmann trial and the Holocaust miniseries, as well as documentaries, popular series such as All in the Family and Star Trek, and news reports of recent interethnic violence in Bosnia, Shandler offers an enlightening tour of television history. Shandler also examines the many controversies that televised presentations of the Holocaust have sparked, demonstrating how their impact extends well beyond the broadcasts themselves. While America Watches is sure to continue this discussion--and possibly the controversies--among many readers.

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337

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Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199881472

ISBN 13

9780199881475

Accounting by the First Public Company

The Pursuit of Supremacy

By: Warwick Funnell,Jeffrey Robertson

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Accounting by the First Public Company

The Pursuit of Supremacy

By: Warwick Funnell,Jeffrey Robertson

The United Dutch East India Company was the first public company, preceding the formation of the English East-India Company by over 40 years. Its fame as the first public company which heralded the transition from feudalism to modern capitalism and its remarkable financial success for nearly two centuries ensure its importance in the history of capitalism. Although a publicly owned, highly complex and diversified business, and commonly agreed to be the largest and most profitable business in the 17th century, throughout its existence the Dutch East-India Company never produced public accounts of its financial affairs which would have allowed investors to judge the performance of the Company. Its financial accounting, which changed little during its lifetime, was not designed as an aid to rational investment decision-making by communicating the Company’s financial performance but to be a means of promoting sound stewardship by senior management. This study examines the contributions of accounting to the remarkable success of the Dutch East-India Company and the influences on these accounting practices. From the time that the German economic historian Werner Sombart proposed that accounting techniques, most especially double-entry bookkeeping, were critical to the development of modern capitalism and the public company, historians and accounting scholars have debated the extent and importance of these contributions. The Dutch East-India Company was a capitalistic enterprise that had a public, permanent capital and its principal objective was to continually increase profit by reinvesting its returns in the business. Rather than the organisation and management of the Dutch East-India Company reflecting the perceived benefits of a particular bookkeeping method, the supremacy that it achieved and maintained in a very hazardous business at a time of recurring conflict between European states was a consequence of the practicalities of 17th century business and The Netherlands’ unique, threatening natural environment which shaped its social and political institutions.

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225

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1134747489

ISBN 13

9781134747481

Computer

A History of the Information Machine

By: Martin Campbell-Kelly,William F. Aspray,Jeffrey R. Yost,Honghong Tinn,Gerardo Con Díaz

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Computer

A History of the Information Machine

By: Martin Campbell-Kelly,William F. Aspray,Jeffrey R. Yost,Honghong Tinn,Gerardo Con Díaz

This volume provides a history of the computer which now comes properly up to the ubiquitous age, with new chapters that look at globalization, platformitization and regulation, allowing readers to engage with the more recent takeover by computers in their historical perspective. With the growing ubiquity of computers, the subject is one of interest to many students and this will feature in history of science and technology courses, and world history courses as well as ones specifically on computing. Books on the history of computing tend to be quite technically or business focused, this covers the social and cultural history as well.

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375

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1000878759

ISBN 13

9781000878752

The Shadow of an Ass

Philosophical Choice and Aesthetic Experience in Apuleius' Metamorphoses

By: Jeffrey P. Ulrich

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The Shadow of an Ass

Philosophical Choice and Aesthetic Experience in Apuleius' Metamorphoses

By: Jeffrey P. Ulrich

Jeffrey Ulrich's The Shadow of an Ass addresses fundamental questions about the reception and aesthetic experience of Apuleius' Metamorphoses, popularly known as The Golden Ass, by situating the novel in a contemporaneous literary and philosophical discourse emerging in the Second Sophistic. This unique Latin novel follows a man who is accidentally turned into a donkey because of his curiosity, viewing the world through a donkey's eyes until he is returned to human form by the Egyptian goddess Isis. In the end, he chooses to become a cult initiate and priest instead of a debased and overindulgent ass. On the one hand, the novel encourages readers to take pleasure in the narrator's experiences, as he relishes food, sex, and forbidden forms of knowledge. Simultaneously, it challenges readers to reconsider their participation in the story by exposing its donkey-narrator as a failed model of heroism and philosophical investigation. Ulrich interprets the Metamorphoses as a locus of philosophical inquiry, positioning the act of reading as a choice of how much to invest in this tale of pleasurable transformation and unanticipated conversion. The Shadow of an Ass further explores how Apuleius, as a North African philosopher translating an originally Greek novel into a Latin idiolect, transforms himself into an intermediary of Platonic philosophy for his Carthaginian audience. Situating the novel in a long history of philosophical and literary conversations, Ulrich suggests that the Metamorphoses anticipates much of the philosophical burlesque we tend to associate with early modern fiction, from Don Quixote to Lewis Carroll.

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381

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University of Michigan Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

047213356X

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9780472133567

The Presidency in the Era of 24-Hour News

By: Jeffrey E. Cohen

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The Presidency in the Era of 24-Hour News

By: Jeffrey E. Cohen

The Presidency in the Era of 24-Hour News examines how changes in the news media since the golden age of television--when three major networks held a near monopoly on the news people saw in the United States--have altered the way presidents communicate with the public and garner popular support. How did Bill Clinton manage to maintain high approval ratings during the Monica Lewinsky scandal? Why has the Iraq war mired George Bush in the lowest approval ratings of his presidency? Jeffrey Cohen reveals how the decline of government regulation and the growth of Internet and cable news outlets have made news organizations more competitive, resulting in decreased coverage of the president in the traditional news media and an increasingly negative tone in the coverage that does occur. He traces the dwindling of public trust in the news and shows how people pay less attention to it than they once did. Cohen argues that the news media's influence over public opinion has decreased considerably as a result, and so has the president's ability to influence the public through the news media. This has prompted a sea change in presidential leadership style. Engaging the public less to mobilize broad support, presidents increasingly cultivate special-interest groups that often already back the White House's agenda. This book carries far-reaching implications for the future of presidential governance and American democracy in the era of new media.

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273

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1400837790

ISBN 13

9781400837793

Democracy in Dark Times

By: Jeffrey C. Isaac

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Democracy in Dark Times

By: Jeffrey C. Isaac

This is a truly illuminating and necessary book. Jeffrey Isaac lucidly explores the moral and political dilemmas of this turbulent fin-de-siecle, East and West. His passionate approach is inspired by a genuine moral vision that sees liberal democracy as an unfinished, continuously beleaguered project. Hannah Arendt and Albert Camus, I am sure, would have been in full agreement with his line of reasoning."—Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland, College Park "This will be the first of the many recent books on Hannah Arendt to move beyond exegesis to engage in the kind of thinking about politics that she so valued. The book brings an Arendtian voice back into contemporary politics."—Lisa Disch, author of Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy "Jeffrey Isaac's new book is essential reading for anyone who seeks to grapple seriously with the challenges confronting progressive democratic aspirations."—Ian Shapiro, Yale University "This book reveals Isaac to be a first-rate essayist, a bold critic who writes about key issues of politics and democracy with learning, style, and power."—Robert A. Dahl, Yale University "Persuaded by Jeffrey Isaac's argument about dark times, I nonetheless found these essays full of light—strong, lively, provocative, and even, despite themselves, encouraging. There can't be a renewal of democratic theory and practice without the kind of critique that Isaac provides."—Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study

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267

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501725785

ISBN 13

9781501725784

The Voice of Newfoundland

A Social History of the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland, 1939-1949

By: Jeffrey Allison Webb

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The Voice of Newfoundland

A Social History of the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland, 1939-1949

By: Jeffrey Allison Webb

The Voice of Newfoundland studies cultural and political changes in Newfoundland from 1939 to 1949 by taking a close look at the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland's radio programming and the responses of their listeners.

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293

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University of Toronto Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802098207

ISBN 13

9780802098207

Cinema and Radio in Britain and America, 1920–60

By: Jeffrey Richards

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Cinema and Radio in Britain and America, 1920–60

By: Jeffrey Richards

Cinema and radio in Britain and America, 1920-60 charts the evolving relationship between the two principal mass media of the period. It explores the creative symbiosis that developed between the two, including regular film versions of popular radio series as well as radio versions of hit films. This fascinating volume examines specific genres (comedy and detective stories) to identify similarities and differences in their media appearances, and in particular issues arising from the nature of film as predominantly visual and radio as exclusively aural. Richards also highlights the interchange of personnel, such as Orson Welles, between the two media. Throughout the book runs the theme of comparison and contrast between the experiences of the two media in Britain and America. The book culminates with an in-depth analysis of the media appearances of three enduring mythic figures in popular culture: Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Students, scholars and lay enthusiasts of cinema history, cultural history and media studies will find this an accessible yet scholarly read.

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321

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1526141248

ISBN 13

9781526141248

The Sound Bite Society

How Television Helps the Right and Hurts the Left

By: Jeffrey Scheuer

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The Sound Bite Society

How Television Helps the Right and Hurts the Left

By: Jeffrey Scheuer

It was once said that all politics is local. But today, all politics is televisual. Candidates spend millions on TV ads. Most people get their news from TV's sound bites. Television doesn't just affect politics--it is politics. But how does that mega-medium shape our political ideas and values? In THE SOUND BITE SOCIETY, Jeffrey Scheuer argues that the rise of television is directly linked to the decline of the American left and the ascent of the Electronic Right. Political argument has been simplified to quick, telegraphic TV sound bites which, he argues, inherently favor the right wing. Television's visual and rhetorical conventions are biased toward simplicity, Scheuer argues, making it the perfect vehicle for conservative messages advocating a simpler society and smaller government. Web site: www.thesoundbitesociety.com

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250

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1135350477

ISBN 13

9781135350475

The Western

Parables of the American Dream

By: Jeffrey M. Wallmann

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The Western

Parables of the American Dream

By: Jeffrey M. Wallmann

Wallmann's sweep through the western is a careful, incisive, and blessedly non-theoretical examination of the implications of the western from the beginning to the present, taking the reader deep into the heart of the subject and offering original and perceptive theories of how the western reflects the evolution of America."--BOOK JACKET.

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260

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Texas Tech University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0896724239

ISBN 13

9780896724235

Performance and Power

By: Jeffrey C. Alexander

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Performance and Power

By: Jeffrey C. Alexander

Performativity has emerged as a critical new idea across the humanities and social sciences, from literary and cultural studies to the study of gender and the philosophy of action. In this volume, Jeffrey Alexander demonstrates how performance can reorient our study of politics and society. Alexander develops a cultural pragmatics that shifts cultural sociology from texts to gestural meanings. Positioning social performance between ritual and strategy, he lays out the elements of social performance - from scripts to mise-en-scène, from critical mediation to audience reception - and systematically describes their tense interrelation. This is followed by a series of empirically oriented studies that demonstrate how cultural pragmatics transforms our approach to power. Alexander brings his new theory of social performance to bear on case studies that range from political to cultural power: Barack Obama's electoral campaign, American failure in the Iraqi war, the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, terrorist violence on September 11th, public intellectuals, material icons, and social science itself. This path-breaking work by one of the world's leading social theorists will command a wide interdisciplinary readership.

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402

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

0745655661

ISBN 13

9780745655666

On Cultural Freedom

An Exploration of Public Life in Poland and America

By: Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

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On Cultural Freedom

An Exploration of Public Life in Poland and America

By: Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

In this timely study, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb explores the nature and prospects of cultural freedom by examining the conditions that favor or threaten its development in the political East and West. Goldfarb--who examines conditions in the Soviet Union, the United States, and their respective European allies--focuses most closely upon Poland and the United States. He investigates a wide range of concrete cases, including the Polish opposition movement and Solidarity, the migration of artists, the American television and magazine industries, American philanthropy, and communist cultural conveyor belts. From these cases, Goldfarb derives a definitive set of sociological conditions for cultural freedom: critical creativity which resists systematic constraints, continuity of cultural tradition, and a relatively autonomous public realm for the reception of culture. Cultural freedom, Goldfarb shows, is not a static state but a process of achievement. Its parameters and content are determined by social practice in cultural institutions and by their relations with other components and the totality of social structure. So defined, cultural freedom is transformed from an ideological concept into one with real critical and analytical power. Through it we can appreciate the invisible nature of constraint in the West and the unapparent but acting supports of cultural freedom existing in socialist countries. Most importantly, Goldfarb's conclusions provide a framework for understanding more clearly than before the circumstance of cultural freedom in both East and West so that citizens may utilize their full creative abilities as they address the problems of the present day.

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188

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226301001

ISBN 13

9780226301006

The American People

Creating a Nation and a Society

By: Gary B. Nash,Julie Roy Jeffrey,John R. Howe,Peter J. Frederick,Allen Freeman Davis

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The American People

Creating a Nation and a Society

By: Gary B. Nash,Julie Roy Jeffrey,John R. Howe,Peter J. Frederick,Allen Freeman Davis

An examination of the complex process of transformation in work organization, technology and labour and product markets that has occurred. The analysis moves between a broad appreciation of structural developments within the economies of the advanced industrial nations, and an in-depth study of enterprise and workplace. It is divided into four parts. The first part reviews the theoretical issues and debates raised by the growth of service industries and employment in the advanced industrial countries. Parts Two and Three are case studies of two service sectors - financial services and the National Health Service. Part Four relates the evidence to a broader appreciation of developments in management/workforce relations occurring in the service sector.

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