The Wreck of Western Culture


Book Description

This elegant, tough-minded book recounts stories about how doctors and patients interact with one other. At the same time, the author is commenting on some of the most profound problems facing modern medicine. It his his direct and honest voice that drives the narratives of this remarkable book.




Humanism


Book Description




All Around Monstrous: Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts


Book Description

We know all kinds of monsters. Vampires who suck human blood, werewolves who harass tourists in London or Paris, zombies who long to feast on our brains, or Godzilla, who is famous in and outside of Japan for destroying whole cities at once. Regardless of their monstrosity, all of these creatures are figments of the human mind and as real as they may seem, monsters are and always have been constructed by human beings. In other words, they are imagined. How they are imagined, however, depends on many different aspects and changes throughout history. The present volume provides an insight into the construction of monstrosity in different kinds of media, including literature, film, and TV series. It will show how and by whom monsters are really created, how time changes the perception of monsters and what characterizes specific monstrosities in their specific historical contexts. The book will provide valuable insights for scholars in different fields, whose interest focuses on either media studies or history.




The Wreck of the Barque Stefano Off the North West Cape of Australia in 1875


Book Description

One of only ten crew members to make it to shore after a shipwreck, sixteen-year-old Miho Baccich struggles to survive, with the aid of an aboriginal tribe, on the desolate North West Cape of Australia.




Meaning, Subjectivity, Society


Book Description

This book grapples with questions at the core of philosophy and social theory – Who am I? Who are we? How are we to live? That is, questions of what humans are capable of, the ‘nature’ of our relationships to each other and to the world around us, and how we should live. They appear to be both prohibitive and seductive – that they are ultimately irresolvable makes it tempting to leave them alone, yet we cannot do that either. This interdisciplinary investigation proceeds primarily as a dialogue with Cornelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor.




Research as Transformative Learning for Sustainable Futures


Book Description

In a rapidly globalizing world, the pressing challenge for science and mathematics educators is to develop their transdisciplinary capabilities for countering the neo-colonial hegemony of the Western modern worldview that has been embedded historically, like a Trojan Horse, in the international education export industry. Research as Transformative Learning for Sustainable Futures introduces the world to next-generation multi-worldview research that empowers prospective educational leaders with a vision and voice for designing 21st century educational policies and practices that foster sustainable development of the diverse cultural capital of their multicultural societies. At the heart of this research are the principles of equity, inclusiveness and social justice. The book starts with accounts of the editors' extensive experience of engaging culturally diverse educators in postgraduate research as transformative learning. A unique aspect of their work is combining Eastern and Western wisdom traditions. In turn, the chapter authors – teacher educators from universities across Asia, Southern Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific – share their experience of research that transformed their philosophies of professional practice. They illustrate the following aspects of their engagement in research as transformative learning for sustainable futures: excavating auto|ethnographically their lifeworld experiences of learning and teaching; developing empowering scholarly perspectives for analysing critically and reflexively the complex cultural framings of their professional practices; re-visioning their cultural and professional identities; articulating transformative philosophies of professional practice; and enacting transformative agency on return to their educational institutions. Contributors are: Naif Mastoor Alsulami, Shashidhar Belbase, Nalini Chitanand, Alberto Felisberto Cupane, Suresh Gautam, Bal Chandra Luitel, Neni Mariana, Milton Norman Medina, Doris Pilirani Mtemang'ombe, Emilia Afonso Nhalevilo, Hisashi Otsuji, Binod Prasad Pant, Sadruddin Bahadur Qutoshi, Yuli Rahmawati, Indra Mani Rai (Yamphu), Siti Shamsiah Sani, Indra Mani Shrestha, Mangaratua M. Simanjorang, and Peter Charles Taylor.




The New Wealth of Cities


Book Description

Over the past two decades, city economies have restructured in response to the decline of older industries. This has involved new forms of planning and urban economic development, a return to traditional concerns of city building and a focus on urban design. During this period, there has also been a marked rise in our understanding of cultural development and its role in the design, economy and life of cities. In this book, John Montgomery argues that this amounts to a shift in urban development. He provides a long overdue look at the dynamics of the city, that is, how cities work in relation to the long cycles of economic development and suggests that a new wave of prosperity, built on new technologies and new industries, is just getting underway in the Western world. The New Wealth of Cities focuses on what effect this will have on cities and city regions and how they should react. Original and wide-ranging, this book will be a definitive resource on city economies and urban planning, explaining why it is that cities develop over time in periods of propulsive growth and bouts of decline.




Russia and Western Civilization


Book Description

This volume introduces readers to an age-old question that has perplexed both Russians and Westerners. Is Russia the eastern flank of Europe? Or is it really the heartland of another civilization? In exploring this question, the authors present a sweeping survey of cultural, religious, political, and economic developments in Russia, especially over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Based on the inter-disciplinary Russian studies program at Dickinson College, this splendid collection will complement many curricula. The text features highlight boxes and selected illustrations. Each chapter ends with a glossary, study questions, and a reading list.




Multilateral Theology


Book Description

This book introduces a new "multilateral" methodology for the contemporary study of theology. It bases this methodology on the idea that there are too many materials contributing as sources for theologizing to sustain the "one method fits all" approach found in many systematic theologies within Christianity. What is needed instead is something that reflects the various and varied natures, purposes, and tasks of theologians’ theologizing for their respective contexts. Engaging materials from a range of Christian traditions, including Evangelicalism, the Catholic Magisterium, and a limited range of pan-Orthodox resources, the book analyzes and assesses major factors that have shaped different streams of theology. Addressing doctrinal development, scripture and revelation, historical tradition and creeds, philosophy and truth, sciences and interdisciplinarity, experience, religious pluralism, and culture, it demonstrates how these various streams can form a multilateral whole. The book concludes by examining the centers and peripherals of methodologies in theologization for a spectrum of theological traditions/streams, both across and beyond Christianity. By offering an approach that keeps in step with the increasingly interconnected and pluralistic world in which we live, this book provides a vital resource for any scholar of Christian theology, constructive theology, contextual theologies, and systematic theology, as well as religious studies.




The Collapse of Western Civilization


Book Description

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought and—finally—the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093, when the disintegration of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet led to mass migration and a complete reshuffling of the global order. Writing from the Second People's Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a senior scholar presents a gripping and deeply disturbing account of how the children of the Enlightenment—the political and economic elites of the so-called advanced industrial societies—failed to act, and so brought about the collapse of Western civilization. In this haunting, provocative work of science-based fiction, Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway imagine a world devastated by climate change. Dramatizing the science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, the book reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do and reveals the self-serving interests of the so called "carbon combustion complex" that have turned the practice of science into political fodder. Based on sound scholarship and yet unafraid to speak boldly, this book provides a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate change literature.