Professor Simon Frith's Books

Resident Alien

Feminist Cultural Criticism

By: Janet Wolff,Professor Emerita in the School of Arts Languages and Cultures Janet Wolff

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Resident Alien

Feminist Cultural Criticism

By: Janet Wolff,Professor Emerita in the School of Arts Languages and Cultures Janet Wolff

In this book of critical writings, Janet Wolff examines issues of exile, memoir, and movement from the perspective of the female stranger. Wolff, born in Great Britain but now living and working in the United States, discusses the positive consequences of women's travel; the use of dance (another form of mobility) as an image of liberation; whether exile or distance provides a better vantage point for cultural criticism than centrality and stability; the place of personal memoir in academic writing; and much more.

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Page Count

182

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300062400

ISBN 13

9780300062403

The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume I: 1950-1967

From Dance Hall to the 100 Club

By: Dr Matt Brennan,Ms Emma Webster,Professor Martin Cloonan,Professor Simon Frith

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The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume I: 1950-1967

From Dance Hall to the 100 Club

By: Dr Matt Brennan,Ms Emma Webster,Professor Martin Cloonan,Professor Simon Frith

The social history of music in Britain since 1950 has long been the subject of nostalgic articles in newspapers and magazines, nostalgic programmes on radio and television and collective memories on music websites, but to date there has been no proper scholarly study. The three volumes of The History of Live Music in Britain address this gap, and do so from the unique perspective of the music promoter: the key theme is the changing nature of the live music industry. The books are focused upon popular music but cover all musical genres and the authors offer new insights into a variety of issues, including changes in musical fashions and tastes; the impact of developing technologies; the balance of power between live and recorded music businesses; the role of the state as regulator and promoter; the effects of demographic and other social changes on music culture; and the continuing importance of do-it-yourself enthusiasts. Drawing on archival research, a wide range of academic and non-academic secondary sources, participant observation and industry interviews, the books are likely to become landmark works within Popular Music Studies and broader cultural history.

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345

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472400291

ISBN 13

9781472400291

Value and the Media

Cultural Production and Consumption in Digital Markets

By: Professor Göran Bolin

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Value and the Media

Cultural Production and Consumption in Digital Markets

By: Professor Göran Bolin

Value is seldom discussed in its own right, though it is of utmost importance to our relations with media texts and cultural objects, as we constantly make judgements of various kinds with respect to them. This book focuses on how value - aesthetic, political and social and economic value - is produced in contemporary media and cultural production. Contending that value is not constituted by the essence of a thing, but is rather produced in social relations, through negotiations and justifications, Value and the Media discusses changes in the cultural industries over the past two decades, emphasising the rise of new, digital media, and the opportunities that these afford for the production and consumption of media texts and objects. Richly illustrated with examples from the UK, USA and Europe, this volume explores a range of media: both old mass media and new personal media, with a constant focus on the importance of both for our understanding of the changes that have occurred on the media landscape and their implications for the production of value. As such, this book will be of interest to social scientists and theorists working in the fields of cultural and media studies, popular culture, and consumption.

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184

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409494446

ISBN 13

9781409494447

Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence

By: Professor Bruce Johnson,Professor Martin Cloonan

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Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence

By: Professor Bruce Johnson,Professor Martin Cloonan

Written against the academically dominant but simplistic romanticization of popular music as a positive force, this book focuses on the 'dark side' of the subject. It is a pioneering examination of the ways in which popular music has been deployed in association with violence, ranging from what appears to be an incidental relationship, to one in which music is explicitly applied as an instrument of violence. A preliminary overview of the physiological and cognitive foundations of sounding/hearing which are distinctive within the sensorium, discloses in particular their potential for organic and psychic violence. The study then elaborates working definitions of key terms (including the vexed idea of the 'popular') for the purposes of this investigation, and provides a historical survey of examples of the nexus between music and violence, from (pre)Biblical times to the late nineteenth century. The second half of the book concentrates on the modern era, marked in this case by the emergence of technologies by which music can be electronically augmented, generated, and disseminated, beginning with the advent of sound recording from the 1870s, and proceeding to audio-internet and other contemporary audio-technologies. Johnson and Cloonan argue that these technologies have transformed the potential of music to mediate cultural confrontations from the local to the global, particularly through violence. The authors present a taxonomy of case histories in the connection between popular music and violence, through increasingly intense forms of that relationship, culminating in the topical examples of music and torture, including those in Bosnia, Darfur, and by US forces in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay. This, however, is not simply a succession of data, but an argumentative synthesis. Thus, the final section debates the implications of this nexus both for popular music studies itself, and also in cultural policy and regulation, the ethics of citizenship, and arguments about human rights.

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258

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

140949392X

ISBN 13

9781409493921

Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song

By: Professor Allan F Moore

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Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song

By: Professor Allan F Moore

Allan F. Moore presents a study of recorded popular song, from the recordings of the 1920s through to the present day. Analysis and interpretation are treated as separable but interdependent approaches to song. Analytical theory is revisited, covering conventional domains such as harmony, melody and rhythm, but does not privilege these at the expense of domains such as texture, the soundbox, vocal tone, lyrics. Moore continues by developing a range of hermeneutic strategies largely drawn from outside the field (in the most part, within psychology and philosophy) but still deeply relevant to the experience of song.

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420

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409495248

ISBN 13

9781409495246

Where Music Helps: Community Music Therapy in Action and Reflection

By: Cochavit Elefant,Mercédès Pavlicevic,Dr Gary Ansdell,Professor Brynjulf Stige

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Where Music Helps: Community Music Therapy in Action and Reflection

By: Cochavit Elefant,Mercédès Pavlicevic,Dr Gary Ansdell,Professor Brynjulf Stige

This book explores how people may use music in ways that are helpful for them, especially in relation to a sense of wellbeing, belonging and participation. The central premise for the study is that help is not a decontextualized effect that music produces. The book contributes to the current discourse on music, culture and society and it is developed in dialogue with related areas of study, such as music sociology, ethnomusicology, community psychology and health promotion. Where Music Helps describes the emerging movement that has been labelled Community Music Therapy, and it presents ethnographically informed case studies of eight music projects (localized in England, Israel, Norway, and South Africa). The various chapters of the book portray "music's help" in action within a broad range of contexts; with individuals, groups and communities – all of whom have been challenged by illness or disability, social and cultural disadvantage or injustice. Music and musicing has helped these people find their voice (literally and metaphorically); to be welcomed and to welcome, to be accepted and to accept, to be together in different and better ways, to project alternative messages about themselves or their community and to connect with others beyond their immediate environment. The overriding theme that is explored is how music comes to afford things in concert with its environments, which may suggest a way of accounting for the role of music in music therapy without reducing music to a secondary role in relation to the "therapeutic," that is, being "just" a symbol of psychological states, a stimulus, or a text reflecting socio-cultural content.

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372

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472416961

ISBN 13

9781472416964

Popular Music and the State in the UK

Culture, Trade or Industry?

By: Professor Martin Cloonan

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Popular Music and the State in the UK

Culture, Trade or Industry?

By: Professor Martin Cloonan

In an era of the rise of the free market and economic globalization, Martin Cloonan examines why politicians and policymakers in the UK have sought to intervene in popular music - a field that has often been held up as the epitome of the free market form. Cloonan traces the development of government attitudes and policies towards popular music from the 1950s to the present, discovering the prominence of two overlapping concerns: public order and the political economy of music. Since the music industry began to lobby politicians, particularly on the issue of copyright in relation to the internet, an inherent tension has become apparent with economic rationale on one side, and Romantic notions of 'the artist' on the other. Cloonan examines the development of policy under New Labour; numerous reports which have charted the economics of the industry; the New Deal for Musicians scheme and the impact of devolution on music policy in Scotland. He makes the case for the inherently political nature of popular music and asserts that the development of popular music policies can only be understood in the context of an increasingly close working relationship between government and the cultural industries. In addition he argues that a rather myopic view of the music industries has meant that policy initiatives have lacked cohesion and have generally served the interests of multinational corporations rather than struggling musicians.

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316

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409493733

ISBN 13

9781409493730

How Popular Musicians Learn

A Way Ahead for Music Education

By: Professor Lucy Green

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How Popular Musicians Learn

A Way Ahead for Music Education

By: Professor Lucy Green

Popular musicians acquire some or all of their skills and knowledge informally, outside school or university, and with little help from trained instrumental teachers. How do they go about this process? Despite the fact that popular music has recently entered formal music education, we have as yet a limited understanding of the learning practices adopted by its musicians. Nor do we know why so many popular musicians in the past turned away from music education, or how young popular musicians today are responding to it. Drawing on a series of interviews with musicians aged between fifteen and fifty, Lucy Green explores the nature of pop musicians' informal learning practices, attitudes and values, the extent to which these altered over the last forty years, and the experiences of the musicians in formal music education. Through a comparison of the characteristics of informal pop music learning with those of more formal music education, the book offers insights into how we might re-invigorate the musical involvement of the population.

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236

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409493563

ISBN 13

9781409493563

Love and Theft : Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class

Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class

By: Department of English University of Virginia Eric Lott Associate Professor

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Love and Theft : Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class

Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class

By: Department of English University of Virginia Eric Lott Associate Professor

For over two centuries, America has celebrated the very black culture it attempts to control and repress, and nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the strange practice of blackface performance. Born of extreme racial and class conflicts, the blackface minstrel show sometimes usefully intensified them. Based on the appropriation of black dialect, music, and dance, minstrelsy at once applauded and lampooned black culture, ironically contributing to a "blackening of America." Drawing on recent research in cultural studies and social history, Eric Lott examines the role of the blackface minstrel show in the political struggles of the years leading up to the Civil War. Reading minstrel music, lyrics, jokes, burlesque skits, and illustrations in tandem with working-class racial ideologies and the sex/gender system, Love and Theft argues that blackface minstrelsy both embodied and disrupted the racial tendencies of its largely white, male, working-class audiences. Underwritten by envy as well as repulsion, sympathetic identification as well as fear--a dialectic of "love and theft"--the minstrel show continually transgressed the color line even as it enabled the formation of a self-consciously white working class. Lott exposes minstrelsy as a signifier for multiple breaches: the rift between high and low cultures, the commodification of the dispossessed by the empowered, the attraction mixed with guilt of whites caught in the act of cultural thievery.

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332

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199762244

ISBN 13

9780199762248

Changing Cultures

Feminism, Youth and Consumerism

By: Professor Mica Nava

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Changing Cultures

Feminism, Youth and Consumerism

By: Professor Mica Nava

Changing Cultures brings together a selection of challenging essays which have their roots in the fertile convergence of feminism, sociology and cultural studies. Themes include the assessment of feminist theory, its transformations and its ability to illuminate issues and practices. The complex relationship between objects of study, their political implications and their historical context is a recurring theme. The book includes analyses of the utopianism of feminist thought on the family; sexuality and sexual difference in youth service provision; and the symbolic resonance of the urban and the domestic in the education of girls. It goes on to investigate child sexual abuse in relation to problems of interpretation and the politics of media representation. The final section examines different theorizations of consumerism and advertising and their implications for our understanding of youth and consumerism.

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228

Publisher

SAGE

Published Date

ISBN 10

1446224279

ISBN 13

9781446224274

When Music Migrates

Crossing British and European Racial Faultlines, 1945–2010

By: Professor Jon Stratton

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When Music Migrates

Crossing British and European Racial Faultlines, 1945–2010

By: Professor Jon Stratton

When Music Migrates uses rich material to examine the ways that music has crossed racial faultlines that have developed in the post-Second World War era as a consequence of the movement of previously colonized peoples to the countries that colonized them. This development, which can be thought of in terms of diaspora, can also be thought of as postmodern in that it reverses the modern flow which took colonizers, and sometimes settlers, from European countries to other places in the world. Stratton explores the concept of ‘song careers’, referring to how a song is picked up and then transformed by being revisioned by different artists and in different cultural contexts. The idea of the song career extends the descriptive term ‘cover’ in order to examine the transformations a song undergoes from artist to artist and cultural context to cultural context. Stratton focuses on the British faultline between the post-war African-Caribbean settlers and the white Britons. Central to the book is the question of identity. For example, how African-Caribbean people have constructed their identity in Britain can be considered through an examination of when ‘Police on My Back’ was written and how it has been revisioned by Lethal Bizzle in its most recent iteration. At the same time, this song, written by the Guyanese migrant Eddy Grant for his mixed-race group The Equals, crossed the racial faultline when it was picked up by the punk-rock group, The Clash. Conversely, ‘Johnny Reggae’, originally a pop-ska track written about a skinhead by Jonathan King and performed by a group of studio artists whom King named The Piglets, was revisioned by a Jamaican studio group called The Roosevelt Singers. After this, the character of Johnny Reggae takes on a life of his own and appears in tracks by Jamaican toasters as a Rastafarian. Johnny’s identity is, then, totally transformed. It is this migration of music that will appeal not only to those studying popular music, but also cultural studies and race.

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233

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

147242980X

ISBN 13

9781472429803

Berkeley at War : The 1960s

The 1960s

By: W.J. Rorabaugh Professor of History University of Washington

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Berkeley at War : The 1960s

The 1960s

By: W.J. Rorabaugh Professor of History University of Washington

Berkeley, California, was the bellwether of the political, social, and cultural upheaval that made the 1960s a unique period of American history--a time when the top-down methods of a conservative establishment collided head-on with the bottom-up, grass-roots ethos of the civil rights movement and an increasingly well-educated and individualistic middle class. W.J. Rorabaugh, who attended the graduate school of the University of California at Berkeley in the early 1970s, presents a lively and informative account of the events that overtook and changed forever what had once been a quiet, conservative white suburb. The rise of the Free Speech Movement, which gave a voice to disfranchised students; the growth and increasing militance of a black community struggling to end segregation; the emergence of radicalism and the anti-war movement; the blossoming of "hippie" culture, with its scorn for materialism and enthusiasm for experimentation with everything from sex and drugs to Eastern philosophies; the beginnings of modern-day feminism and environmentalism--and how all of these coalesced in the explosive conflict over People's Park--are traced in a meticulously researched and authoritative narrative. At issue was the question of power, and the struggle between the establishment and the powerless led to developments that the advocates of a freer society could scarcely have foreseen: Ronald Reagan, elected governor of California in reaction to the events at Berkeley, and Edwin H. Meese III, who battled against the student movement and People's Park, rose to national power in the 1980s (without, however, gaining any popularity in Berkeley, where Walter Mondale won 83 percent of the vote in 1984). An invaluable account of its time and place, this book anchors the '60s in American history, both before and since that colorful decade.

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Page Count

325

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198022522

ISBN 13

9780198022527

The Beatles as Musicians : Revolver through the Anthology

Revolver through the Anthology

By: Walter Everett Associate Professor of Music in Music Theory University of Michigan

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The Beatles as Musicians : Revolver through the Anthology

Revolver through the Anthology

By: Walter Everett Associate Professor of Music in Music Theory University of Michigan

Given the phenomenal fame and commercial success that the Beatles knew for the entire course of their familiar career, their music per se has received surprisingly little detailed attention. Not all of their cultural influence can be traced to long hair and flashy clothing; the Beatles had numerous fresh ideas about melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, form, colors, and textures. Or consider how much new ground was broken by their lyrics alone--both the themes and imagery of the Beatles' poetry are key parts of what made (and still makes) this group so important, so popular, and so imitated. This book is a comprehensive chronological study of every aspect of the Fab Four's musical life--including full examinations of composition, performance practice, recording, and historical context--during their transcendent late period (1966-1970). Rich, authoritative interpretations are interwoven through a documentary study of many thousands of audio, print, and other sources.

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Page Count

494

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198029608

ISBN 13

9780198029601

Prince: The Making of a Pop Music Phenomenon

By: Professor Sarah Niblock,Professor Stan Hawkins

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Prince: The Making of a Pop Music Phenomenon

By: Professor Sarah Niblock,Professor Stan Hawkins

The career of the prolific pop artist Prince has become inextricably intertwined with the history of popular music since the late 1970s. This multi-instrumental icon, who remains one of the highest-grossing live performers in America, has been called a genius for his musicianship, composition and incredible performances. But Prince holds iconic status for more than his music. Best known for his racial blurring and extravagant sexual persona, Prince's music and visual iconography has always chimed with the ambiguity of subjectivity at any given moment. 'Prince' the sign offers a space for fans to evaluate and reconfigure their attitudes towards their own identities, and towards their position as subjects within the socio-cultural sphere. This much-needed interdisciplinary analysis is the first of its kind to examine critically Prince's popular music, performances, sounds, lyrics and the plethora of accompanying visual material such as album covers, posters, fashions, promotional videos and feature films. Specifically, the book explores how and why he has played such a profoundly meaningful and significant role in his fans' lives.

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Page Count

209

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409494799

ISBN 13

9781409494799

Songs in Their Heads : Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives

Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives

By: Patricia Shehan Campbell Professor of Music Education University of Washington

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Songs in Their Heads : Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives

Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives

By: Patricia Shehan Campbell Professor of Music Education University of Washington

This book explores the musical interest and needs of children in their daily lives. Based upon their expressed thoughts and actual "musicking" behaviors, this text examines the songs they sing, the rythyms they make, and the roles that music plays for them. Blending standard education field experiences with ethnographic techniques, Dr. Campbell demonstrates how music is personally and socially meaningful to children and what values they place on particular musical styles, songs, and functions. He explores musical behaviors in various contextual settings, and presents in notated and narrative forms some of the "songs in their heads," balancing music learned with music "made," and intentional, purposeful music with natural musical behavior. Songs in Their Heads is a vivid and engaging book that bridges the disciplines of music education, musicology, ethnomusicology, and folklore. Designed as a text or supplemental text in a variety of music education method courses, as well as a reference for music specialists and classroom teachers, this book will also appeal to parents interested in understanding and enhancing music making in their children.

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Page Count

266

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195354931

ISBN 13

9780195354935

Experiencing Music Video

Aesthetics and Cultural Context

By: Carol Vernallis

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Experiencing Music Video

Aesthetics and Cultural Context

By: Carol Vernallis

Treats music video as a distinct multimedia artistic genre, different from film, television, and photography and describes how musical and visual codes work together.

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Page Count

368

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231117981

ISBN 13

9780231117982

SamulNori: Korean Percussion for a Contemporary World

By: Professor Keith Howard

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SamulNori: Korean Percussion for a Contemporary World

By: Professor Keith Howard

SamulNori is a percussion quartet that has given rise to a genre, of the same name, which is arguably Korea’s most successful ‘traditional’ music of recent times. Today, there are dozens of amateur and professional samulnori groups.There is a canon of samulnori pieces, closely associated with the first founding quartet but played by all, and many creative evolutions on the basic themes, made by the rapidly growing number of virtuosic percussionists. This volume explores this vibrant percussion genre, charting its origins and development, the formation of the canon of pieces, teaching and learning strategies, new evolutions, and current questions relating to maintaining, developing, and sustaining samulnori in the future.

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231

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472462890

ISBN 13

9781472462893

Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain

By: Professor William Washabaugh

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Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain

By: Professor William Washabaugh

Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain explores the efforts of the current government in southern Spain to establish flamenco music as a significant patrimonial symbol and marker of cultural identity. Further, it aims to demonstrate that these Andalusian efforts form part of the ambitious project of rethinking the nation-state of Spain, and of reconsidering the nature of national identity. A salient theme in this book is that the development of notions of style and identity are mediated by social institutions. Specifically, the book documents the development of flamenco's musical style by tracing the genre's development, between 1880 and 1980, and demonstrating the manner in which the now conventional characterization of the flamenco style was mediated by krausist, modernist, and journalist institutions. Just as importantly, it identifies two recent institutional forces, that of audio recording and cinema, that promote a concept of musical style that sharply contrasts with the conventional notion. By emphasizing the importance of forward-looking notions of style and identity, Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain makes a strong case for advancing the Spanish experiment in nation-building, but also for re-thinking nationalism and cultural identity on a global scale.

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200

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409495264

ISBN 13

9781409495260

International Media Research

A Critical Survey

By: John R. Corner,Philip Schlesinger,Professor Philip R Schlesinger,Roger Silverstone

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International Media Research

A Critical Survey

By: John R. Corner,Philip Schlesinger,Professor Philip R Schlesinger,Roger Silverstone

International Media Research offers a rigorous and critical review of key approaches and concerns that have recently defined the field of media research. In this clearly argued collection of essays, the contributors analyze and reflect upon dominant themes and debates that have made media research an increasingly important element of cultural theory. The volume begins with a critical evaluation of the work of the leading media scholar, Elihu Katz, and continues with an exploration of the relationship between media studies and adjacent disciplines: cultural studies and gender and sexuality. Contributors drawn from Britain, America, Canada and Belgium consider the relationships between media research and media policy in different national and international contexts. Focusing on the European Union, East-Central Europe, North America and Latin America, chapters assess the impact of social, economic and political circumstances on policy debates and the shaping of the research agenda. The final chapter adopts a transatlantic perspective in tracing and analysing the history of the media's role in reporting war.

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263

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1134667566

ISBN 13

9781134667567

Valuing Musical Participation

By: Professor Stephanie Pitts

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Valuing Musical Participation

By: Professor Stephanie Pitts

Increasingly, it is becoming evident that those involved in socio-musical studies must focus their investigative lens on musical practice and articulation of the self, on music and community involvement and on music as a social medium for social relationships. What motivates people to be involved in musical performance, and how do they articulate these needs and drives? What do performers gain from their involvement in musical activities? How do audience members perceive their relationship to the performer, the music and the event? These questions and many more are addressed here with the benefit of detailed empirical work, including case studies of a chamber music festival and a contemporary music summer school. Pitts investigates the value of musical participation for performers and audience members in a range of contexts, using a multi-disciplinary approach to place new empirical data in the framework of existing theory and literature. Themes examined include: the shared musical experience; the social structures of performing societies; how people identify with music; the values implicit in musical preferences; the social responsibilities of the performer; the audience view of concerts and festivals; the social power of music and educational implications and responsibilities. Pitts draws upon literature from musicology, sociology and psychology of music, ethnomusicology, music education and community music to demonstrate the diversity of enquiry about musical behaviours. The conclusions of the book are based upon empirical evidence gleaned through case studies, with the data integrated thematically throughout, to enable a greater depth of discussion than individual studies usually permit.

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281

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409493598

ISBN 13

9781409493594

The Rule of Law

A Very Short Introduction

By: Aziz Z. Huq,Frank and Bernice J Greenberg Professor of Law Aziz Z Huq

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The Rule of Law

A Very Short Introduction

By: Aziz Z. Huq,Frank and Bernice J Greenberg Professor of Law Aziz Z Huq

This very short introduction sets out the origins and development of an English-language debate centered around the phrase "rule of law." It aims is to explore the distinctive ethical contribution offered by various thinkers to this specific phrase, first theorized by the English scholar A.V. Dicey, while largely setting aside how the same questions are framed and resolved in other traditions. The book opens by canvassing the classical and early modern sources upon which Dicey and his successors explicitly drew. It then explores the idea of Dicey, who it flags as the first self-conscious theorist of the rule of law. It then recounts his immediate successors. These include a heterogenous range of thinkers, such as Friedrich Hayek, Lon Fuller, Ronald Dworkin, and Tom Bingham. With this genealogy in hand, the book then reflects the important question of why the rule of law (in some version or other) persists-that is, why do actors with the power to cast aside the rule of law not do so? The book next turns to the ways in which the term "rule of law" has diffused across borders, making it a geopolitical phenomenon. Specifically, the phrase was taken toward the end of the twentieth century across borders by actors as diverse as the World Bank, Singapore, and the Chinese Communist Party. Finally, the book closes by examining the way that the rule-of-law tradition can be challenged both as a matter of theory and practice"--

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153

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0197657427

ISBN 13

9780197657423

Worlds of ScienceCraft

New Horizons in Sociology, Philosophy, and Science Studies

By: Mr Alexander I Stingl,Professor Sal Restivo,Ms Sabrina M Weiss

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Worlds of ScienceCraft

New Horizons in Sociology, Philosophy, and Science Studies

By: Mr Alexander I Stingl,Professor Sal Restivo,Ms Sabrina M Weiss

A response to complex problems spanning disciplinary boundaries, Worlds of ScienceCraft offers bold new ways of conceptualizing ideas of science, sociology, and philosophy. Beginning with the historical foundations of civilization and progress, assumptions about the categories we use to talk about minds, identities, and bodies are challenged through case studies from mathematics, social cognition, and medical ethics.

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Page Count

251

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

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ISBN 10

1409445275

ISBN 13

9781409445272

Flicker

Your Brain on Movies

By: Professor Jeffrey Zacks

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Flicker

Your Brain on Movies

By: Professor Jeffrey Zacks

How is it that a patch of flickering light on a wall can produce experiences that engage our imaginations and can feel totally real? From the vertigo of a skydive to the emotional charge of an unexpected victory or defeat, movies give us some of our most vivid experiences and most lasting memories. They reshape our emotions and worldviews--but why? In Flicker, Jeff Zacks delves into the history of cinema and the latest research to explain what happens between your ears when you sit down in the theatre and the lights go out. Some of the questions Flicker answers: Why do we flinch when Rocky takes a punch in Sylvester Stallone's movies, duck when the jet careens towards the tower in Airplane, and tap our toes to the dance numbers in Chicago or Moulin Rouge? Why do so many of us cry at the movies? What's the difference between remembering what happened in a movie and what happened in real life--and can we always tell the difference? To answer these questions and more, Flicker gives us an engaging, fast-paced look at what happens in your head when you watch a movie.

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Page Count

361

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199982880

ISBN 13

9780199982882

Commonwealth and the English Reformation

Protestantism and the Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483–1560

By: Professor Ben Lowe

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Commonwealth and the English Reformation

Protestantism and the Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483–1560

By: Professor Ben Lowe

Whilst much recent research has dealt with the popular response to the religious change ushered in during the mid-Tudor period, this book focuses not just on the response to broad liturgical and doctrinal change, but also looks at how theological and reform messages could be utilized among local leaders and civic elites. It is this cohort that has often been neglected in previous efforts to ascertain the often elusive position of the common woman or man. Using the Vale of Gloucester as a case study, the book refocuses attention onto the concept of "commonwealth" and links it to a gradual, but long-standing dissatisfaction with local religious houses. It shows how monasteries, endowed initially out of the charitable impulses of elites, increasingly came to depend on lay stewards to remain viable. During the economic downturn of the mid-Tudor period, when urban and landed elites refocused their attention on restoring the commonwealth which they believed had broken down, they increasingly viewed the charity offered by religious houses as insufficient to meet the local needs. In such a climate the Protestant social gospel seemed to provide a valid alternative to which many people gravitated. Holding to scrutiny the “revisionist revolution” of the past twenty years, the book reopens debate and challenges conventional thinking about the ways the traditional church lost influence in the late middle ages, positing the idea that the problems with the religious houses were not just the creation of the reformers but had rather a long history. In so doing it offers a more complete picture of reform that goes beyond head-counting by looking at the political relationships and how they were affected by religious ideas to bring about change.

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