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The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant in the Room PDF Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195187172
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
Citing the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes as a classic example of a situation where everyone refuses to acknowledge an obvious truth, Zerubavel sheds new light on the social and political underpinnings of silence and denial--the keeping of "open secrets."

The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant in the Room PDF Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195187172
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
Citing the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes as a classic example of a situation where everyone refuses to acknowledge an obvious truth, Zerubavel sheds new light on the social and political underpinnings of silence and denial--the keeping of "open secrets."

Taken for Granted

Taken for Granted PDF Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691202435
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
Why is the term "openly gay" so widely used but "openly straight" is not? What are the unspoken assumptions behind terms like "male nurse," "working mom," and "white trash"? Offering a revealing and provocative look at the word choices we make every day without even realizing it, Taken for Granted exposes the subtly encoded ways we talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, social status, and more. In this engaging and insightful book, Eviatar Zerubavel describes how the words we use - such as when we mark "the best female basketball player" but leave her male counterpart unmarked-provide telling clues about the things many of us take for granted. By marking "women's history" or "Black History Month," we are also reinforcing the apparent normality of the history of white men. When we mark something as being special or somehow noticeable, that which goes unmarked-such as maleness, whiteness, straightness, and able-bodiedness-is assumed to be ordinary by default. Zerubavel shows how this tacit normalizing of certain identities, practices, and ideas helps to maintain their cultural dominance-including the power to dictate what others take for granted. A little book about a very big idea, Taken for Granted draws our attention to what we implicitly assume to be normal-and in the process unsettles the very notion of normality.

Living in Denial

Living in Denial PDF Author: Kari Marie Norgaard
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262294982
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
An analysis of why people with knowledge about climate change often fail to translate that knowledge into action. Global warming is the most significant environmental issue of our time, yet public response in Western nations has been meager. Why have so few taken any action? In Living in Denial, sociologist Kari Norgaard searches for answers to this question, drawing on interviews and ethnographic data from her study of "Bygdaby," the fictional name of an actual rural community in western Norway, during the unusually warm winter of 2000-2001. In 2000-2001 the first snowfall came to Bygdaby two months later than usual; ice fishing was impossible; and the ski industry had to invest substantially in artificial snow-making. Stories in local and national newspapers linked the warm winter explicitly to global warming. Yet residents did not write letters to the editor, pressure politicians, or cut down on use of fossil fuels. Norgaard attributes this lack of response to the phenomenon of socially organized denial, by which information about climate science is known in the abstract but disconnected from political, social, and private life, and sees this as emblematic of how citizens of industrialized countries are responding to global warming. Norgaard finds that for the highly educated and politically savvy residents of Bygdaby, global warming was both common knowledge and unimaginable. Norgaard traces this denial through multiple levels, from emotions to cultural norms to political economy. Her report from Bygdaby, supplemented by comparisons throughout the book to the United States, tells a larger story behind our paralysis in the face of today's alarming predictions from climate scientists.

Ancestors and Relatives

Ancestors and Relatives PDF Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199773955
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
Noted social scientist Eviatar Zerubavel casts a critical eye on how we trace our past-individually and collectively arguing that rather than simply find out who our ancestors are from genetics or history, we actually create the stories that make them our ancestors.

Generally Speaking

Generally Speaking PDF Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019751930X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
In this invitation to "concept-driven" sociology, defying the conventional split between "theory" and "methodology" (as well as between "quantitative" and "qualitative" research), Eviatar Zerubavel introduces a yet unarticulated "Simmelian" method of theorizing specifically designed to reveal fundamental, often hidden social patterns. Insisting that it can actually be taught, he examines the theoretico-methodological process (revolving around the epistemic and analytical acts of focusing, generalizing, "exampling," and analogizing) by which concept-driven researchers can distill generic social patterns from the culturally, historically, and domain-specific contexts in which they encounter them empirically. Disregarding conventionally noted substantive variability in order to uncover conventionally disregarded formal commonalities, Generally Speaking draws on cross-cultural, cross-historical, cross-domain, and cross-level analogies in an effort to reveal formal parallels across disparate contexts. Using numerous examples from culturally and historically diverse contexts and a wide range of social domains while also disregarding scale, Zerubavel thus introduces a pronouncedly transcontextual "generic" sociology.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Hidden in Plain Sight PDF Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199366616
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Book Description
Many of us take for granted that what we perceive is a completely accurate representation of the world around us. Yet we have all had the experience of suddenly realizing that the keys or glasses that we had been looking for in vain were right in front of us the whole time. The capacity of our sense organs far exceeds our mental capabilities, and as such, looking at something does not guarantee that we will notice it. Our minds constantly prioritize and organize the information we take in, bringing certain things to the foreground, while letting others - that which we deem irrelevant - recede into the background. What ultimately determines what we perceive, and what we do not? In this fascinating book, noted sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel argues that we perceive things not just as human beings but as social beings. Drawing on fascinating examples from science, the art world, optical illusions, and all walks of life, he shows that what we notice or ignore varies across cultures and throughout history, and illustrates how our environment and our social lives - everything from our lifestyles to our professions to our nationalities - play a role in determining how we actually use our senses to access the world. A subtle yet powerful examination of one of the central features of our conscious life, this book offers a way to think about all that might otherwise remain hidden in plain sight.

Truth, Silence and Violence in Emerging States

Truth, Silence and Violence in Emerging States PDF Author: Aidan Russell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351141104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Book Description
Around the world in the twentieth century, political violence in emerging states gave rise to different kinds of silence within their societies. This book explores the histories of these silences, how they were made, maintained, evaded, and transformed. This book gives a comprehensive view of the ongoing evolutions and multiple faces of silence as a common strand in the struggles of state-building. It begins with chapters that examine the construction of "regimes of silence" as an act of power, and it continues through explorations of the ambiguous limits of speech within communities marked by this violence. It highlights national and transnational attempts to combat state silences, before concluding with a series of considerations of how these regimes of silence continue to be extrapolated in the gaps of records and written history. This volume explores histories of the composed silences of political violence across the emerging states of the late twentieth century, not solely as a present concern of aftermath or retrospection but as a diachronic social and political dimension of violence itself. This book makes a major original contribution to international history, as well as to the study of political terror, human rights violations, social recovery, and historical memory.

Privilege Power And Difference

Privilege Power And Difference PDF Author: Allan G. Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781259951831
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description


Smokescreen

Smokescreen PDF Author: Philip J. Hilts
Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
Cigarettes, smoking, intrigue and a troubling look at the abuses of corporate power.

The Elephant in the Church

The Elephant in the Church PDF Author: Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner
Publisher: Abingdon Press
ISBN: 1426753217
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 142

Book Description
A church can be a dangerous place. The perils may be so obvious, they become "elephants" standing in the fellowship hall, lurking in the sanctuary, ready to spring into the pastor's study, and tromp out of the choir room. The word "elephant" stands for an obvious truth or issue that is ignored or unnamed--a blind spot. Yet we allow elephants to occupy a large amount of space in the minds and hearts of those that tiptoe around them. Discussing common blind-spots of congregations and church leaders, the authors provide examples and illustrations for how to stop these "elephants" from ruining a ministry.