Growing up as a child of a sharecropper family in South Georgia paints an image of hard times but my memories are just the opposite. We ate three good meals every day and slept in a comfortable bed at night. My parents loved me and taught me a code of conduct that I still strive to live by. I was taught; don't lie, cheat, say ugly words or talk bad about your neighbors. Go to Sunday school on Sunday and stay for church. Say yes sir and no sir to your elders and do not talk with food in your mouth. I was also taught to look people in the eye when talking to them. Daddy said that people with shifty eyes were not trustworthy. When I was assigned to the White House Communications Agency as a Staff Officer during my military career, my upbringing became a source of strength that saw me though some demanding situations. I learned at a very early age that God loved me. When I became a Christian at the age of fifteen, Jesus made sure my very own angel was there to lift me out of numerous deep holes I dug for myself. This book is memories of growing up in the mid forties and fifties and my twenty-three years in the U. S Army. These were challenging times for America and I consider myself fortunate to have lived through the period. World War II was over and millions of military men and women were returning home to pick back up their lives with the same energy and determination that won the war. The world today has changed dramatically from the world I grew up in. We have improved our standard of living with technologic advancements we only dreamed about. However, the world appears to have lost its ethical compass and is digressing back to the moral decay of the Roman Empire period of time. My prayer is that America will once again find its bearing and be a principled compass for the world to follow.
A fascinating exploration of the subculture of Japanese day laborers, whose lives depart radically from the traditions of stability Westerners associate with Japan.
Yokohama Street Life: The Precarious Career of a Japanese Day Laborer is a one-man ethnography, tracing the career of a single Japanese day laborer called Kimitsu, from his wartime childhood in the southern island of Kyushu through a brief military career to a lifetime spent working on the docks and construction sites of Tokyo, Osaka and Yokohama. Kimitsu emerges as a unique voice from the Japanese ghetto, a self-educated philosopher whose thoughts on life in the slums, on post-war Japanese society and on more abstract intellectual concerns are conveyed in a series of conversations with British anthropologist Tom Gill, whose friendship with Kimitsu spans more than two decades. For Kimitsu, as for many of his fellow day laborers at the bottom of Japanese society, offers none of the comforting distractions of marriage, family life, or a long-term career in a settled workplace. It leads him through existential philosophy towards Buddhist mysticism as he fills the time between days of hard manual labor with visits to second-hand bookshops in search of enlightenment. The book also portrays Kimitsu’s living environment, a Yokohama slum district called Kotobuki. Kotobuki is a ‘doya-gai’—a slum inhabited mainly by men, somewhat similar to the skid row districts that used to be common in American cities. Traditionally these men have earned a basic living by working as day laborers, but the decline in employment opportunities has forced many of them into welfare dependence or homelessness. Kimitsu’s life and thought are framed by an account of the changing way of life in Kotobuki, a place that has gradually been transformed from a casual laboring market to a large, shambolical welfare center. In Kotobuki the national Japanese issues of an aging workforce and economic decline set in much earlier than elsewhere, leading to a dramatic illustration of the challenges facing the Japanese welfare state.
Written in 397 A.D., St. Augustine's classic, Confessions, reveals the innermost thoughts and struggles of a soul converting from selfishness and pleasure-seeking to a life of love for God. Augustine of Hippo (345-430 A.D.) was born in North Africa to a devoutly Christian mother and pagan father. Of Latin stock, Augustine was given Christian instruction but waited until later in life to be baptized. Augustine took a mistress who bore him a son before he was eighteen. Augustine's sexual appetite drove him to seek pleasure where he could find it, but it also plagued his consience. His hunger for religious things led him through many of the belief systems of the day, including Manichaeism and Neoplatonism. Augustine finally turned to God in 386 A.D. when he heard a child say, "take, read" a copy of Paul's letter to the Romans. Upon his conversion to Christianity, Augustine became a prodigious writer, with his writings standing second only to the apostle Paul in their impact on the church. He died as Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. Confessions is the autobiography of Augustine of Hippo, a moving and profound record of a human soul and its struggles. The most widely read of all his works, it not only tells the story of Augustine's struggle in the faith, but also his love for the Master. Confessions speaks to the heart of humanity about human weakness, human frailty, human depravity, and the human need for a holy God. This classic is an exercise in self-knowledge and true humility in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation. Book jacket.
What damage does psychology do to people's lives, and what can we do about it? How do we recognise and support resistance? Written by expert practitioners-researchers, this co-authored book explores how psychology legislates on normality and then uses its "expert" knowledge to turn social marginalisation into pathology. Chapters address a range of cultural and institutional arenas in which inequalities structured around categories of gender, "race", class and sexuality are reproduced by psychological practices: from self-help books to special hospitals, from school exclusions to Gender Identity Clinics, from mothering magazines to mental health services. But far from just documenting the damage, this book identifies the ways in which both professionals and users of services can act to counter psychology's abuses. As practical intervention as well as theoretical critique, Psychology, Discourse and Social Practice offers tangible examples of how change can be effected. This book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates in psychology, health, education and welfare disciplines. It is also relevant to social workers and education and health professionals, as well as professional psychologists.
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