Author: Richard StiversPublisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791478033
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
Explores how Enlightenment values have been transformed in a technological civilization.
The Illusion of Freedom and Equality
Author: Richard StiversPublisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791478033
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
Explores how Enlightenment values have been transformed in a technological civilization.
Illusions of Emancipation
Author: Joseph P. ReidyPublisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469648377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 519
Book Description
As students of the Civil War have long known, emancipation was not merely a product of Lincoln's proclamation or of Confederate defeat in April 1865. It was a process that required more than legal or military action. With enslaved people fully engaged as actors, emancipation necessitated a fundamental reordering of a way of life whose implications stretched well beyond the former slave states. Slavery did not die quietly or quickly, nor did freedom fulfill every dream of the enslaved or their allies. The process unfolded unevenly. In this sweeping reappraisal of slavery's end during the Civil War era, Joseph P. Reidy employs the lenses of time, space, and individuals' sense of personal and social belonging to understand how participants and witnesses coped with drastic change, its erratic pace, and its unforeseeable consequences. Emancipation disrupted everyday habits, causing sensations of disorientation that sometimes intensified the experience of reality and sometimes muddled it. While these illusions of emancipation often mixed disappointment with hope, through periods of even intense frustration they sustained the promise that the struggle for freedom would result in victory.
Burning All Illusions
Author: David EdwardsPublisher: South End Press
ISBN: 9780896085312
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
This is a book about freedom. Above all about the idea that there is often no greater obstacle to freedom than the assumption that it has already been attained. What prison, after all, could be more secure than that deemed to be "the world," where boundaries of action and thought are assumed to define not the limits of the permissible, but the limits of the possible. In the past we have been prisoners of tyrants and dictators, and consequently have needed to win our freedom in very concrete, physical terms. We now need to free ourselves not from a slave ship or a concentration camp, but from many of the illusions fostered in our democratic society. "[A] wise and acute analysis of the way our minds are controlled, not in a totalitarian state, but in a 'democratic' one. Edwards also suggests how we can escape this control in a self-help book which, unlike other books of this genre, connects our inner world of alienation with the world outside."--Howard Zinn "[A] treatise on what freedom truly means.... Burning All Illusions is an important philosophical and psychology text that should be on every political science curriculum reading list!"--Wisconsin Book Watch
The Glass Palace
Author: Nasser M. BeydounPublisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 0875869556
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
When Americans read in today's news that Qatar is funding rebel groups across the Middle East, few of us have any idea what Qatar is or how it is run. A nation of perhaps 250,000 locals served by 1.35 million foreign workers, the emirate is burning its gas and oil revenue at a break-neck pace in an effort to build a position on the global stage. Is Qatar actually a suitable ally or a legitimate partner for the United States? Under Qatari labor law, foreign workers are actually owned, for all practical purposes, by their Qatari sponsors in a system akin to slavery. This book chronicles the experience of an American executive working in Qatar and delves into Qatar's feudal work-sponsorship system, showing that an economic great leap forward is not necessarily accompanied by modernization, despite superficial emblems; that prosperity and democracy need not go hand in hand; and that being a US ally may be totally unrelated to any notion of human rights or personal liberties. There are other Western expats still trapped in Qatar. Yet American workers, students and others blithely interact with Qatar as if it were a 'normal' (i.e., Westernized) nation where one may navigate with confidence. It is nothing of the sort. In the meantime Qatar, under the leadership of an emir who overthrew his own father, is fostering international unrest across the entire Arab world, while racing to build a modern-looking city from scratch. Some of the economic, environmental and demographic assumptions underlying these plans are worthy of another 1000 tales from Arabia. American businessman Nasser Beydoun found out for himself how quickly the Qataris are moving when he embarked on an exciting new career path, leaving his hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, to move to Qatar to manage the opening of several chain restaurants as part of the sudden economic boom there. It didn't take long for the deal to turn sour, but Beydoun didn't realize the extent of his problem until he tried to leave the country — and was stopped at the border. In this book he paints a general picture of life in this fantastical realm while relaying his personal struggle to escape a legal runaround worthy of Kafka's novels.
Ideal Illusions
Author: James PeckPublisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1429991569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
From a noted historian and foreign-policy analyst, a groundbreaking critique of the troubling symbiosis between Washington and the human rights movement The United States has long been hailed as a powerful force for global human rights. Now, drawing on thousands of documents from the CIA, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and development agencies, James Peck shows in blunt detail how Washington has shaped human rights into a potent ideological weapon for purposes having little to do with rights—and everything to do with furthering America's global reach. Using the words of Washington's leaders when they are speaking among themselves, Peck tracks the rise of human rights from its dismissal in the cold war years as "fuzzy minded" to its calculated adoption, after the Vietnam War, as a rationale for American foreign engagement. He considers such milestones as the fight for Soviet dissidents, Tiananmen Square, and today's war on terror, exposing in the process how the human rights movement has too often failed to challenge Washington's strategies. A gripping and elegant work of analysis, Ideal Illusions argues that the movement must break free from Washington if it is to develop a truly uncompromising critique of power in all its forms.
A Dance to Freedom
Author: Sylvie ShenePublisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781539859888
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
A Dance to Freedom is a highly personal, inspiring tale of beating the odds to find the truth that can set you free. In addition to offering an inside look at the excesses, dangers and even tenderness within the world of adult entertainment, the book gives much-needed practical advice, based on the teachings of Alice Miller, on how anyone can break the invisible chains of the painful dramas of their past.
Magical Thinking, Fantastic Film, and the Illusions of Neoliberalism
Author: Michael J. BlouinPublisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137531649
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
This book analyzes how contemporary popular films with fantastic themes, including Candyman, Frozen, The Cabin in the Woods, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, cultivate neoliberal subjectivities. These films promise dramatic change, but they too often deliver more of the same. Although proponents maintain the illusion that the militant enforcement of freemarket economics will resolve racism, climate change, and imperialism, their magical thinking actually fuels the crises. Magical Thinking, Fantastic Film, and the Illusions of Neoliberalism explores the ways in which the visual economies of Hollywood fantasy compliment this particular political economy.
Freedom
Author: William H. BergquistPublisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Presents first-hand stories told by entrepreneurs, artists, Jews, Gypsies, Russians, housewives, and students in Eastern European countries, illuminating the meaning of freedom as it is discovered anew. The authors examine the connection between freedom and the emergence of new forms of authoritarianism, nationalism, and anti- Semitism in Hungary and Estonia. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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