Download or read book Dilemmas of the American Self written by and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores stability and change in American social character and identity, and offers a theory about what it means to be an individual within contemporary American society. Skeptical of the widely-accepted thesis that the self, at least in America, has drastically changed, John P. Hewitt assumes that there is more historical continuity and that the culture is filled with internal contradictions. Combining the insights of social psychology, with those of writers who have offered critiques of the larger society and its influences on the individual, he revises our understanding of the person in American society. Hewitt examines the theories of such authors as David Riesman, Allen Wheelis, Christopher Lasch, Erving Goffman, Carl Rogers, Ralph Turner, and others. He treats their emphasis on the decline of transformation of the self not as social theory to be tested, but as cultural text that reveals some of the main historical and contemporary features and fault lines of American culture. "American culture is best characterized not as relentlessly individualistic or as lacking in the capacity to conceive of or discuss community, but as torn between individualism and communitarianism, thus creating serious felt difficulties of social adjustment and personal meaning." Proposing a symbolic interactionist theory of culture, Hewitt emphasizes inherent polarities of meaning and dilemmas of conduct that shape the experience of self: conformity versus rebellion, staying versus leaving, and dependence versus independence. He constructs a theory of identity that views personal identity and social identity as contending means for securing the continuity and integration of the self, and applies the theory to American society by depicting autonomous, exclusivist, and pragmatic strategies of self-construction.
Download or read book Dilemmas Of American Self written by John Hewitt and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-29 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theory about what it means to be an individual within contemporary American society.
Download or read book Dilemmas of Scale in America s Federal Democracy written by Martha Derthick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-13 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nationalist and local traditions vie within the American federal system and the American experiment with self-government. Bringing together contributions from history, political science and sociology, this book focuses primarily on the local, seeking to recapture its origins, explain its current impact and assess its worth.
Download or read book Equality written by Charles Postel and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth study of American social movements after the Civil War and their lessons for today by a prizewinning historian The Civil War unleashed a torrent of claims for equality—in the chaotic years following the war, former slaves, women’s rights activists, farmhands, and factory workers all engaged in the pursuit of the meaning of equality in America. This contest resulted in experiments in collective action, as millions joined leagues and unions. In Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1886, Charles Postel demonstrates how taking stock of these movements forces us to rethink some of the central myths of American history. Despite a nationwide push for equality, egalitarian impulses oftentimes clashed with one another. These dynamics get to the heart of the great paradox of the fifty years following the Civil War and of American history at large: Waves of agricultural, labor, and women’s rights movements were accompanied by the deepening of racial discrimination and oppression. Herculean efforts to overcome the economic inequality of the first Gilded Age and the sexual inequality of the late-Victorian social order emerged alongside Native American dispossession, Chinese exclusion, Jim Crow segregation, and lynch law. Now, as Postel argues, the twenty-first century has ushered in a second Gilded Age of savage socioeconomic inequalities. Convincing and learned, Equality explores the roots of these social fissures and speaks urgently to the need for expansive strides toward equality to meet our contemporary crisis.
Download or read book The Dilemmas of American Conservatism written by Kenneth L. Deutsch and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-09-24 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second half of the twentieth century, American conservatism emerged from the shadow of New Deal liberalism and developed into a movement exerting considerable influence on the formulation and execution of public policy in the United States. During that period, the political philosophers who provided the intellectual foundations for the American conservative movement were John H. Hallowell, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, John Courtney Murray, Friedrich Hayek, and Willmoore Kendall. By offering a comprehensive analysis of their thoughts and beliefs, The Dilemmas of American Conservatism both illuminates the American conservative imagination and reveals its most serious contradictions. The contributing authors question whether a core set of conservative principles can be determined based on the frequently diverging perspectives of these key philosophers.
Download or read book The Democratic Dilemma of American Education written by Arnold Shober and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling new book asks: How can American education policy be consistent with democratic ideals? Robust democracy is the combination of participation, self-rule, equality, understanding, and inclusion, but these norms can produce contradictory policy. Local control in education policy can undermine educational equality. Participation in teachers unions can improve working conditions but thwart self-rule by local taxpayers. The Democratic Dilemma of American Education draws on contemporary research in political science and education policy to offer remarkably balanced insights into these challenging issues. Expertly navigating through local, state, and federal layers of education policy, Arnold Shober examines contemporary controversies over education governance, teachers unions and collective bargaining, school funding, school choice, academic accountability, and desegregation. Shober describes the inherent practical dilemmas of current policy and the difficulties policymakers face in overcoming them to produce lasting educational reform in a democratic, federal system of government. Timely, engaging, and accessible, this is the ideal resource for courses in public policy as well as education and politics.
Download or read book Self Color and the American Dilemma written by William Paul Nye and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Dilemma of Progressivism written by Will Morrisey and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2009-04-16 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book-length study of Progressive-Era presidents' views on the theme of self-government, The Dilemma of Progressivism critically analyzes their understanding of executive leadership and the office of the presidency. Will Morrisey examines both the rhetoric and the actions of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson to show the ways in which their thought shaped their presidencies. He shows how the Progressive presidents dealt with the genesis of a modern, centralized American state and the conflicting increase in popularity of the notion of self-government. Drawing larger conclusions about the key American ideas of self-government, federalism, freedom, and social welfare, Morrisey strikes the right balance between political theory and history in this study on self-government and the political thought of three American presidents.
Download or read book Making the American Self written by Daniel Walker Howe and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be an American, and how have individual Americans consciously endeavored to create their own identity? "Self-improvement," "self-culture," "self-made man," to "make something of oneself"--all are terms that were used from colonial to Victorian times. The particular language that framed the quest has fallen out of fashion, but it was a powerful cultural imperative for hundreds of years. The quest, in all its "post" guises, continues. Daniel Howe considers the ideas Americans once had about a proper construction of the self. Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Bushnell, Horace Mann, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Dorothea Dix, Frederick Douglass, among others, engaged in discussion about the composition of human nature, the motivation of human behavior, and what can be done about the social problems these create. They shared a common model of human psychology, in which powerful but base passions must be mastered by reason in the service of virtue. How to accomplish this was often itself a subject of passionate controversy. The story reveals that Americans both distrusted individual autonomy and were enthusiastic about it; passions, reason, and moral sense collided on how to manage it. Howe is empathetic to all the quests--for elites and artisans, blacks and women--seeing in them a basic pursuit of identity. The author demonstrates that aspirations for "self-control" and "self-discipline," grounded in conservatism and evangelical Christianity, also shaped movements that branched leftward to promote social welfare, feminism, and civil rights.
Download or read book Cool Pose written by Richard Majors and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1993-08 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of black men in America using a tough-guy image to obscure their anger and disappointment over their roles in society back to their origins in Africa and the slave era.
Download or read book Ethical Dilemmas in Psychotherapy written by Samuel Knapp and published by American Psychological Association (APA). This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New and experienced psychotherapists alike can find themselves overwhelmed by an ethical quandary where there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. This book presents positive ethics as a means to overcome such ethical challenges. The positive approach focuses on not just avoiding negative consequences, but reaching the best possible outcomes for both the psychotherapist and the client. The authors outline a clear decision-making process that is based on three practical strategies: the ethics acculturation model to help therapists incorporate personal ethics into their professional roles, the quality enhancement model for dealing with high-risk patients who are potentially harmful, and ethical choice-making strategies to make the most ethical decision in a situation where two ethical principles conflict. Throughout the decision-making process, psychotherapists are encouraged to follow four basic guidelines: Focus on overarching ethical principles Consider intuitive, emotional, and other nonrational factors Accept that some problems have elusive solutions Solicit input from colleagues and consultation groups Numerous vignettes illustrate how to apply positive ethics to many different ethical challenges that psychotherapists will likely encounter in practice.
Download or read book Race Religion and the Continuing American Dilemma written by C. Eric Lincoln and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1999-05-17 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work on religion and the racial problems of modern america -now brought up to date. Since the early days of the Republic, Americans' exuberant, unchastened idealism, their commitment to the notion of a perfect society in the New World, has clashed with the reality of ugly American society, and religious groups have all too often accommodated themselves to these injustices. In Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma, C. Eric Lincoln reevaluates what Gunnar Myrdal called "the American dilemma" and studies particularly the influence of the black church. This revised edition takes into account the weakening of welfare and affirmative action, and argues that the black church must serve today as a vital moral authority to lead us in to the twenty-first century..
Download or read book Self Organizing Federalism written by Richard C. Feiock and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates self-organizing institutions that resolve institutional collective action dilemmas in federalism, urban governance, and regional management of natural resources.
Download or read book America s Revolutionary Mind written by C. Bradley Thompson and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's Revolutionary Mind is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776. The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought—what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
Download or read book The Undiscovered Self written by C. G. Jung and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These two essays, written late in Jung's life, reflect his responses to the shattering experience of World War II and the dawn of mass society. Among his most influential works, "The Undiscovered Self" is a plea for his generation--and those to come--to continue the individual work of self-discovery and not abandon needed psychological reflection for the easy ephemera of mass culture. Only individual awareness of both the conscious and unconscious aspects of the human psyche, Jung tells us, will allow the great work of human culture to continue and thrive. Jung's reflections on self-knowledge and the exploration of the unconscious carry over into the second essay, "Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams," completed shortly before his death in 1961. Describing dreams as communications from the unconscious, Jung explains how the symbols that occur in dreams compensate for repressed emotions and intuitions. This essay brings together Jung's fully evolved thoughts on the analysis of dreams and the healing of the rift between consciousness and the unconscious, ideas that are central to his system of psychology. This paperback edition of Jung's classic work includes a new foreword by Sonu Shamdasani, Philemon Professor of Jung History at University College London.
Download or read book Tough Jews written by Paul Breines and published by . This book was released on 1990-10-30 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ... Dilemma of American Jews.
Download or read book Tocqueville in Arabia written by Joshua Mitchell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in the democratic age. So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1835, in his magisterial work, Democracy in America. This did not mean, as so many have believed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, that the political apparatus of democracy would sweep the world. Rather, Tocqueville meant that as each nation left behind the vestiges of its aristocracy, life for its citizens or subjects would be increasingly isolated and lonely. In America, more than a half century of scholarship has explored and chronicled our growing isolation and loneliness. What of the Middle East? Does Tocqueville prediction—confirmed already by the American experience—hold true there as well? Americans look to the Middle East and see a rich network of familial and tribal linkages that seem to suggest that Tocqueville’s analysis does not apply. A closer look reveals that this is not true. In the Middle East today, citizens and subjects live amidst a profound tension: familial and tribal linkages hold them fast, and at the same time rapid modernization has left them as isolated and lonely as so many Americans are today. The looming question, anticipated so long ago by Tocqueville, is how they will respond to this isolation and loneliness. Joshua Mitchell has spent years teaching Tocqueville’s classic account, Democracy in America, in America and the Arab Gulf and, with Tocqueville in Arabia, he offers a profound account of how the crisis of isolation and loneliness is playing out in similar and in different ways, in America and in the Middle East. While American students tend to value individualism and commercial self-interest, Middle Eastern students have grave doubts about individualism and a deep suspicion about capitalism, which they believe risks the destruction of long-held loyalties and obligations. Where American students, in their more reflective moments, long for more durable links than they currently have, the bonds that constrain the freedoms Middle Eastern students imagine the modern world offers at once frighten them and enkindle their imagination. When pondering suffering, American students tend to believe its causes can be engineered away, through better education and the advances of science. Middle Eastern students tend still to offer religious accounts, but are also enticed by the answers Americans give―and wonder if the two accounts can coexist at all. Moving back and forth between self-understandings in America and in the Middle East, Mitchell offers a framework for understanding the common challenges in both regions, and highlights the great temptation both will have to overcome—rejecting the seeming incoherence of the democratic age, and opting for one or another scheme to re-enchant the world. Whether these schemes take the form of various purported Islamic movements in the Middle East, or the form of enchanted nationalism in American and in Europe, the remedy sought will not cure the ailment of the democratic age. About this, Mitchell comes to the defense Tocqueville long ago offered: the dilemmas of the democratic age can be courageously endured, but they cannot resolved. We live in a time rife with mutual misunderstandings between America and the Middle East. Tocqueville in Arabia offers a guide to the present, troubled times, leavened by the author’s hopes about the future.
