Download or read book Civilization and Its Contents written by Bruce Mazlish and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Civilization" is a constantly invoked term. It is used by both politicians and scholars. How useful, in fact, is this term? Civilization and Its Contents traces the origins of the concept in the eighteenth century. It shows its use as a colonial ideology, and then as a support for racism. The term was extended to a dead society, Egyptian civilization, and was appropriated by Japan, China, and Islamic countries. This latter development lays the groundwork for the contemporary call for a "dialogue of civilizations." The author proposes instead that today the use of the term "civilization" has a global meaning, with local variants recognized as cultures. It may be more appropriate, however, to abandon the name "civilization" and to focus on a new understanding of the civilizing process.
Download or read book Civilization and Its Discontents written by Sigmund Freud and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Dover thrift editions).
Download or read book Civilization and Its Enemies written by Lee Harris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-03-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe....They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish....They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy. "That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part -- something that we could correct.... "Our first task is therefore to try to grasp what the concept of the enemy really means. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason, and not ours." So begins Civilization and Its Enemies, an extraordinary tour de force by America's "reigning philosopher of 9/11," Lee Harris. What Francis Fukuyama did for the end of the Cold War, Lee Harris has now done for the next great conflict: the war between the civilized world and the international terrorists who wish to destroy it. Each major turning point in our history has produced one great thinker who has been able to step back from petty disagreements and see the bigger picture -- and Lee Harris has emerged as that man for our time. He is the one who has helped make sense of the terrorists' fantasies and who forces us most strongly to confront the fact that our enemy -- for the first time in centuries -- refuses to play by any of our rules, or to think in any of our categories. We are all naturally reluctant to face a true enemy. Most of us cannot give up the myth that tolerance is the greatest of virtues and that we can somehow convert the enemy to our beliefs. Yet, as Harris's brilliant tour through the stages of civilization demonstrates, from Sparta to the French Revolution to the present, civilization depends upon brute force, properly wielded by a sovereign. Today, only America can play the role of sovereign on the world stage, by the use of force when necessary. Lee Harris's articles have been hailed by thinkers from across the spectrum. His message is an enduring one that will change the way readers think -- about the war with Iraq, about terrorism, and about our future.
Download or read book Moses and Civilization written by Robert A. Paul and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: And he details the way Freud's myth corresponds to the unconscious fantasy structure of the obsessional personality - a style of personality dynamics Paul sees as essential to maintaining the bureaucratic institutions that comprise Western civilization's most distinctive features.
Download or read book The Sea and Civilization written by Lincoln Paine and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A monumental retelling of world history through the lens of the sea—revealing in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, lake and stream, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world’s waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human. The Sea and Civilization is a mesmerizing, rhapsodic narrative of maritime enterprise, from the origins of long-distance migration to the great seafaring cultures of antiquity; from Song Dynasty human-powered paddle-boats to aircraft carriers and container ships. Lincoln Paine takes the reader on an intellectual adventure casting the world in a new light, in which the sea reigns supreme. Above all, Paine makes clear how the rise and fall of civilizations can be linked to the sea. An accomplishment of both great sweep and illuminating detail, The Sea and Civilization is a stunning work of history.
Download or read book Discontent and Its Civilizations written by Mohsin Hamid and published by Riverhead Books. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in hardccover in 2015 by Riverhead Books.
Download or read book Civilization written by Regis Debray and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American civilization’s dominance over Europe—and what to do about it In 1900, an American of taste was a European in exile; in 2000, a trendy European is a frustrated American—or one waiting for a visa. Régis Debray explores America’s global cultural ascendancy in this provocative and witty analysis of our contemporary condition. Whereas Europe once foregrounded the importance of time and writing, America is a civilization of spectacle and kinetics, blind to the tragic complexities of human life. A measure of America’s success is how its jargon has been adopted by European languages, but there is much more than that to the States’ infiltration into all aspects of modern life. For Debray, the dominance of American civilization is a historical fait accompli. Yet he envisions a sanctuary for the best of Europe modelled on Vienna at the cusp of the twentieth century, where art and literature flowered in the rich soil of a decaying empire. For decades to come, Europe can still offer a rich cultural seedbed. “Some will call it decadence,” writes Debray, “others liberation. Why not both?”
Download or read book How the Irish Saved Civilization written by Thomas Cahill and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A book in the best tradition of popular history—the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. • The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift! Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars"—and thus preserve Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians. In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost—they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task. As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated. In the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, How The Irish Saved Civilization reconstructs an era that few know about but which is central to understanding our past and our cultural heritage. But it conveys its knowledge with a winking wit that aptly captures the sensibility of the unsung Irish who relaunched civilization.
Download or read book The Empire of Civilization written by Brett Bowden and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term civilization comes with considerable baggage, dichotomizing people, cultures, and histories as civilized - or not. While the idea of civilization has been deployed throughout history to justify all manner of interventions and sociopolitical engineering, few scholars have stopped to consider what the concept actually means. Here, ..
Download or read book The Emergence of Civilization written by Charles Keith Maisels and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-16 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Emergence of Civilisation is a major contribution to our understanding of the development of urban culture and social stratification in the Near Eastern region. Charles Maisels argues that our present assumptions about state formation, based on nineteenth century speculations, are wrong. His investigation illuminates the changes in scale, complexity and hierarchy which accompany the development of civilisation. The book draws conclusions about the dynamics of social change and the processes of social evolution in general, applying those concepts to the rise of Greece and Rome, and to the collapse of the classical Mediterranean world.
Download or read book Cities in Civilization written by Peter Hall and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 1998 with total page 1236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging over 2,500 years,Cities in Civilizationis a tribute to the city as the birthplace of Western civilization. Drawing on the contributions of economists and geographers, of cultural, technological, and social historians, Sir Peter Hall examines twenty-one cities at their greatest moments. Hall describes the achievements of these golden ages and outlines the precise combinations of forces -- both universal and local -- that led to each city's belle epoque. Hall identifies four distinct expressions of civic innovation: artistic growth, technological progress, the marriage of culture and technology, and solutions to evolving problems. Descriptions of Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Elizabethan London, and nineteenth-century Vienna bring to life those seedbeds of artistic and intellectual creativity. Explorations of Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, of Henry Ford's Detroit, and of Palo Alto at the dawn of the computer age highlight centers of technological advances. Tales of the creation of Los Angeles' movie industry and the birth of the blues and rock 'n' roll in Memphis depict the marriage of culture and technology. Finally, Hall celebrates cities that have been forced to solve problems created by their very size. With Imperial Rome came the apartment block and aqueduct; nineteenth-century London introduced policing, prisons, and sewers; twentieth-century New York developed the skyscraper; and Los Angeles became the first city without a center, a city ruled instead by the car. And in a fascinating conclusion, Hall speculates on urban creativity in the twenty-first century. This penetrating study reveals not only the lives of cities but also the lives of the people who built them and created the civilizations within them. A decade in the making,Cities in Civilizationis the definitive account of the culture of cities.
Download or read book Civilization and Empire written by Shogo Suzuki and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-02-02 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines the influence of International Society on East Asia, and how its attempts to introduce ‘civilization’ to ‘barbarous’ polities contributed to conflict between China and Japan. Challenging existing works that have presented the expansion of (European) International Society as a progressive, linear process, this book contends that imperialism – along with an ideology premised on ‘civilising’ ‘barbarous’ peoples – played a central role in its historic development. Considering how these elements of International Society affected China and Japan’s entry into it, Shogo Suzuki contends that such states envisaged a Janus-faced International Society, which simultaneously aimed for cooperative relations among its ‘civilized’ members and for the introduction of ‘civilization’ towards non-European polities, often by coercive means. By examining the complex process by which China and Japan engaged with this dualism, this book highlights a darker side of China and Japan’s socialization into International Society which previous studies have failed to acknowledge. Drawing on Chinese and Japanese primary sources seldom utilized in International Relations, this book makes a compelling case for revising our understandings of International Society and its expansion. This book will be of strong interest to students and researcher of international relations, international history, European studies and Asian Studies.
Download or read book Only a Joke Can Save Us written by Todd McGowan and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only a Joke Can Save Us presents an innovative and comprehensive theory of comedy. Using a wealth of examples from high and popular culture and with careful attention to the treatment of humor in philosophy, Todd McGowan locates the universal source of comedy in the interplay of the opposing concepts lack and excess. After reviewing the treatment of comedy in the work of philosophers as varied as Aristotle, G. W. F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Alenka Zupancic, McGowan, working in a psychoanalytic framework, demonstrates that comedy results from the deployment of lack and excess, whether in contrast, juxtaposition, or interplay. Illustrating the power and flexibility of this framework with analyses of films ranging from Buster Keaton and Marx Brothers classics to Dr. Strangelove and Groundhog Day, McGowan shows how humor can reveal gaps in being and gaps in social order. Scholarly yet lively and readable, Only a Joke Can Save Us is a groundbreaking examination of the enigmatic yet endlessly fascinating experience of humor and comedy.
Download or read book The Crossroads of Civilization written by Angus Robertson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From the Congress of Vienna to the Austria World Summit, the city of Vienna has hosted key meetings on peace to climate action. This is a first-class book about Vienna as the crossroads of civilization and as the international capital." —Arnold Schwarzenegger A rich and illuminating history of the world capital that has transformed art, culture, and politics. Vienna is unique amongst world capitals in its consistent international importance over the centuries. From the ascent of the Habsburgs as Europe's leading dynasty to the Congress of Vienna, which reordered Europe in the wake of Napoleon's downfall, to bridge-building summits during the Cold War, Vienna has been the scene of key moments in world history. Scores of pivotal figures were influenced by their time in Vienna, including: Empress Maria Theresa, Count Metternich, Bertha von Suttner, Theodore Herzl, Gustav Mahler, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, John F. Kennedy, and many others. In a city of great composers, artists, and thinkers, it is here that both the most positive and destructive ideas of recent history have developed. From its time as the capital of an imperial superpower, through war, dissolution, dictatorship to democracy Vienna has reinvented itself and its relevance to the rest of the world.
Download or read book Culture Civilization and Humanity written by Tarek Heggy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divided into four parts and comprising Tarek Heggy's writings on the Egyptian mind, this volume makes an attempt to diagnose the illnesses of contemporary Egyptian political and socio-economic actuality and prescribe two solutions: a liberal political system and a modern market economy.
Download or read book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order written by Samuel P. Huntington and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-05-31 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic study of post-Cold War international relations, more relevant than ever in today’s geopolitical climate—with a foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Since its initial publication in 1996, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. Samuel Huntington explains how clashes between civilizations pose the greatest threat to world peace, but also how an international order based on civilizations is the best safeguard against war. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order explains how the population explosion in Muslim countries and the economic rise of East Asia have changed global politics. These developments challenge Western dominance, promote opposition to supposedly “universal” Western ideals, and intensify inter-civilization conflict over such issues as nuclear proliferation, immigration, human rights, and democracy. In his incisive analysis, Huntington offers a strategy for the West to preserve its unique culture and emphasizes the need for people everywhere to learn to coexist in a complex, multipolar, multi-civilizational world.
Download or read book Punishment and Civilization written by John Pratt and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2002-07-10 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `A lucid and fascinating account of how society initially comes to be viewed as ′civilized′ on the basis of how it punishes its offenders, and the various numances and contradictions that form the backdrop to that ′civilization′ prior to 1970 and the unraveling of that process thereafter. ...He [Pratt] has at the very least broadened the boundaries of the debate about the history of imprisonment in new and novel ways that will surely become a basis for future analysis′ - The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice ′In presenting and organizing such a wealth of historical material, John Pratt′s book will be welcomed by those who teach and study the history of the prison in the English-speaking world′ - Criminal Justice Punishment and Civilization examines how a framework of punishment that suited the values and standards of the civilized world came to be set in place from around 1800 to the late 20th century. In this book, John Pratt draws on research about prison architecture, clothing, diet, hygienic arrangements and changes in penal language to establish this. The author demonstrates that this did not mean, however, that such a framework of punishment was ′civilized′. Instead it meant that punishment in the civilized world became anonymous and remote. Prison brutalities and privations could be largely unchecked by a public that did not want to be involved. In the last few decades it has become clear that civilized societies have to tolerate new boundaries of punishment. This is not because of any development of ′civilized punishment′. Instead this is due to a shift in public mood and power: from public indifference to public involvement in penal development. Throughout this text theoretical ideas and concepts are accessibly introduced and illustrated with a wide range of examples from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It will be essential reading for students and academics of punishment, prisons and social theory.
