Caught in Play


Book Description

Most of us have become so immersed in a book or game or movie that the activity temporarily assumed a profound significance and the outside world began to fade. Although we are likely to enjoy these experiences in the realm of entertainment, we rarely think about what effect they might be having on us. Precisely because it is so pervasive, entertainment is difficult to understand and even to talk about. To understand the social role of entertainment, Caught in Play looks closely at how we engage entertainment and at the ideas and practices it creates and sustains. Though entertainment is for fun, it does not follow that it is trivial in its effect on our lives. As this work reveals, entertainment generates commitments to values we are not always willing to acknowledge: values of pleasure, self-indulgence, and consumption. For more information, please visit www.caughtinplay.com.




Shopping as an Entertainment Experience


Book Description

Shopping as an Entertainment Experience explores the ways in which shopping has become a significant entertainment feature in our daily lives. Dr. Mark H. Moss examines the department store, the mall, and the e-store to demonstrate how shopping is often the most common leisure experience that people indulge in to occupy themselves. This unique book focuses on the historical evolution of shopping environments into contemporary entertainment or cultural zones. Through a phenomenological framework, Moss analyzes the way stores, outlets, and restaurants in malls mingle and merge aspects of consumption and merchandising. Shopping as an Entertainment Experience appeals to sociologists, cultural theorists, and those interested in popular culture.




What Is Religion?


Book Description

In this book Richard Curtis argues that religion is a universal human phenomenon regardless of content. In popular culture religion is understood to be belief in supernatural things but specialists in the field usually use a generic definition. Dr. Curtis, here, offers his theory of the nature of religion, which is open as to content (that is compatible with theistic and atheistic positions), based on the latest insights from Philosophy of Mind, the Social Sciences and the Cognitive Sciences.







People and Politics in Urban America, Second Edition


Book Description

First Published in 1998. Approximately 75 percent of Americans live in cities and surrounding suburbs, and the characteristics of those cities inescapably affect the quality of their lives. This book examines the extent to which these Americans use the political process to control the characteristics of life in their metropolises. In addition, this second edition revision places great emphasis on the role of political leaders, while recognising the interdependence between those leaders and various interests in the city.




Religious Intolerance in America, Second Edition


Book Description

The story of religion in America is one of unparalleled diversity and protection of the religious rights of individuals. But that story is a muddied one. This new and expanded edition of a classroom favorite tells a jolting history—illuminated by historical texts, pictures, songs, cartoons, letters, and even t-shirts—of how our society has been and continues to be replete with religious intolerance. It powerfully reveals the narrow gap between intolerance and violence in America. The second edition contains a new chapter on Islamophobia and adds fresh material on the Christian persecution complex, white supremacy and other race-related issues, sexuality, and the role played by social media. John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal's overarching narrative weaves together a rich, compelling array of textual and visual materials. Arranged thematically, each chapter provides a broad historical background, and each document or cluster of related documents is entwined in context as a discussion of the issues unfolds. The need for this book has only increased in the midst of today's raging conflicts about immigration, terrorism, race, religious freedom, and patriotism.




American Agora


Book Description




Principles of Sustainable Living


Book Description

No one can argue against wanting a better quality of life—and Principles of Sustainable Living: A New Vision for Health, Happiness, and Prosperity provides keen insight into how to achieve that so that individuals, communities, and the environment all come out winners. This transdisciplinary text presents principles of sustainability, develops environmental literacy, and expands awareness of sustainable practices that will steer readers toward a lifestyle that they, as well as the entire planet, will benefit from. Author Richard Jurin, an expert in sustainable living, has written numerous publications on sustainable development, business leadership for sustainability, and related issues. He takes students beyond sustainability’s traditional “triple bottom line” of people, profit, and planet to a quadruple paradigm that includes economic, sociocultural, psychological, and ecological aspects of sustainability. This text is supported by its own website, which includes an instructor guide, test package, study guide, and presentation package. The book’s 36 illustrations and tables are all included in the presentation package. The text offers • principles of sustainability that support a range of university courses in multiple disciplines; • a systems approach to sustainability that reflects worldwide views and values; • case studies, personal reflections, and applications that help students understand their status and the challenges of the future; and • guidelines for developing sustainable living through daily choices. The book explores the mind-sets that have created the modern, consumer-based world we live in, exposing environmental and societal global problems as it does; lays out new ways of thinking, championing sustainable thinking as a prerequisite for living a healthy, happy, vibrant life that benefits the planet; and details positive options for living a sustainable lifestyle. Readers will be able to understand sustainability from a broad perspective—how it can improve their lives, resolve environmental problems, and improve the condition of the planet for all life. Principles of Sustainable Living points out the problems and challenges we face individually and as caretakers of our planet and offers lifestyle approaches that can sustain quality of life long into the future.




The Image of the City


Book Description

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.




Ecologies of Faith in New York City


Book Description

Ecologies of Faith in New York City examines patterns of interreligious cooperation and conflict in New York City. It explores how representative congregations in this religiously diverse city interact with their surroundings by competing for members, seeking out niches, or cooperating via coalitions and neighborhood organizations. Based on in-depth research in New York's ethnically mixed and rapidly changing neighborhoods, the essays in the volume describe how religious institutions shape and are shaped by their environments, what new roles they have assumed, and how they relate to other religious groups in the community.