Download or read book The Cultural Imperative written by Richard D. Lewis and published by Nicholas Brealey International. This book was released on 2007 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will the tidal wave of globalization lead us to a bland and uniform cultural landscape dominated by a unified cultural perspective? Will cultural imperialism triumph in the twenty-first century? Or will culture, which drives human behavior through religion, language, geography and history, maintain its influence on the human consciousness? In The Cultural Imperative, Global Trends in the Twenty-first Century, Richard D Lewis explores these questions and proposes his thesis in this sweeping new book that examines the forces that keep us from taking off our cultural spectacles and explains how cultural traits are to deeply embedded to be homogenized, as predicted by so many others.
Download or read book The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism written by Geoffrey Galt Harpham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-02-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this bold interdisciplinary work, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body, writing, ethics, and aesthetics. He suggests that we consider the ascetic as "the 'cultural' element in culture," and presents a close analysis of works by Athanasius, Augustine, Matthias, Grünewald, Nietzsche, Foucault, and other thinkers as proof of the extent of asceticism's resources. Harpham demonstrates the usefulness of his findings by deriving from asceticism a "discourse of resistance," a code of interpretation ultimately more generous and humane than those currently available to us.
Download or read book The Aesthetic Imperative written by Peter Sloterdijk and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging book, renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk examines art in all its rich and varied forms: from music to architecture, light to movement, and design to typography. Moving between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, his analyses span the centuries, from ancient civilizations to contemporary Hollywood. With great verve and insight he considers the key issues that have faced thinkers from Aristotle to Adorno, looking at art in its relation to ethics, metaphysics, society, politics, anthropology and the subject. Sloterdijk explores a variety of topics, from the Greco-Roman invention of postcards to the rise of the capitalist art market, from the black boxes and white cubes of modernism to the growth of museums and memorial culture. In doing so, he extends his characteristic method of defamiliarization to transform the way we look at works of art and artistic movements. His bold and original approach leads us away from the well-trodden paths of conventional art history to develop a theory of aesthetics which rejects strict categorization, emphasizing instead the crucial importance of individual subjectivity as a counter to the latent dangers of collective culture. This sustained reflection, at once playful, serious and provocative, goes to the very heart of Sloterdijk’s enduring philosophical preoccupation with the aesthetic. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy and aesthetics and will appeal to anyone interested in culture and the arts more generally.
Download or read book The Customer Culture Imperative A Leader s Guide to Driving Superior Performance written by Linden Brown and published by McGraw-Hill Education. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BECOME THE ENVY OF YOUR INDUSTRY WITH A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC CULTURE Winner of Marketing Book of the Year 2015 by Marketing and Sales Books For the first time, this groundbreaking guide unlocks the secrets used by Amazon, Virgin, Apple, Starbucks, and salesforce.com. It creates a guide for success based on three years of scientific study drawing insights from more than 100 businesses to identify seven key factors. When implemented together these factors have been proven to drive superior business performance. Customer culture is as fundamental to business performance as breathing is to living. It is the life force of your business. This applies no matter what your industry sector. And with the evidence-based methods in this book, you can replicate their success in your business! The Customer Culture Imperative reveals the key disciplines of customer culture that consistently predict enhanced, sustainable business results. Each one is linked to a particular strategy and drives predictable and measurable improvements in one or more business performance factors--from innovation and customer satisfaction to growth in sales and profits to higher rates of new-product success. It gives you the tools to: Inspire everyone in the company to embrace a customer-centric culture Unify efforts across units by creating a "common language" for change Collect and measure data from your efforts and benchmark your progress Make change long term so you leave a legacy of an enduring business Creating a customer-centric company takes more than making an investment in the customer service department and systems. It's about building a culture in which the customer is at the heart of all decisions made within every function and unit. What's best for the customer is what's best for business. Make that a part of the DNA of your organization, and you will lead your company to unprecedented success. Guaranteed. PRAISE FOR THE CUSTOMER CULTURE IMPERATIVE "Linden and Chris Brown have written the best book on what it takes to build a genuine customer culture in an organization. Their framework and their stories will inspire you to take the next step." -- Philip Kotler, S. C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University "A customer-focused culture is a powerful competitive advantage. This book will show you how to diagnose the level of a customer culture and then make the leadership moves to raise this level." -- George Day, Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania "Creating unique customer engagements is an essential ingredient of the 'Starbucks Experience.' Crafting an authentic culture is essential to insuring that all employees consistently execute and innovate the highest quality customer experience. Linden and Chris provide a unique framework and road map to build this culture within large and small organizations." -- Arthur Rubinfeld, chief creative officer and president, Global Innovation and Evolution Fresh Retail, Starbucks "Smart phones, smart networks, and personalized apps are changing the way people live and work--giving control to an emerging class of globally connected customers that have the power to shift markets. Linden and Chris Brown’s work will help you understand what is happening and what it means to your business.” -- David Thodey, Chief Executive Officer, Telstra "Over the 40+ years of my life in business I have always known that a customer culture is the key to success. How to achieve it has been a continuous search and challenge. This book is the clearest roadmap I have read to truly achieve a customer culture and all the benefits it brings.” -- John Stanhope, Chairman, Australia Post "Some books (alas, very rare) summarise well-researched management theory, combined with current best practice, to deliver powerful and pragmatic guidelines for growing shareholder value. This is one such book. Read it. Enjoy it. It is a powerful contribution to best practice.” -- Malcolm MacDonald, Emeritus Professor, Cranfield University School of Management "Smart phones, smart networks, and personalized apps are changing the way people live and work,giving control to an emerging class of globally connected customers that have the power to shift markets. Linden and Chris Brown’s work will help you understand what is happening and what it means to your business.”--David Thodey, Chief Executive Officer, Telstra "Over the 40+ years of my life in business I have always known that a customer culture is the key to success. How to achieve it has been a continuous search and challenge. This book is the clearest roadmap I have read to truly achieve a customer culture and all the benefits it brings.”--John Stanhope, Chairman, Australia Post "Some books, alas very rare, summarise well-researched management theory, combined with current best practice, to deliver powerful and pragmatic guidelines for growing shareholder value. This is one such book. Read it. Enjoy it. It is a powerful contribution to best practice.”--Malcolm MacDonald, Emeritus Professor, Cranfield University School of Management "This easy to read book provides essential and unique guidance for driving the critical relationship between customer centricity and sustained organisational performance."-—Dr Ramzi Fayed, Executive Dean, Australian Graduate School of Leadership
Download or read book Civilizational Imperatives written by Oliver P. Charbonneau and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Civilizational Imperatives, Oliver Charbonneau reveals the little-known history of the United States' colonization of the Philippines' Muslim South in the early twentieth century. Often referred to as Moroland, the Sulu Archipelago and the island of Mindanao were sites of intense US engagement and laboratories of colonial modernity during an age of global imperialism. Exploring the complex relationship between colonizer and colonized from the late nineteenth century until the eve of the Second World War, Charbonneau argues that American power in the Islamic Philippines rested upon a transformative vision of colonial rule. Civilization, protection, and instruction became watchwords for US military officers and civilian administrators, who enacted fantasies of racial reform among the diverse societies of the region. Violence saturated their efforts to remake indigenous politics and culture, embedding itself into governance strategies used across four decades. Although it took place on the edges of the Philippine colonial state, this fraught civilizing mission did not occur in isolation. It shared structural and ideological connections to US settler conquest in North America and also borrowed liberally from European and Islamic empires. These circuits of cultural, political, and institutional exchange—accessed by colonial and anticolonial actors alike—gave empire in the Southern Philippines its hybrid character. Civilizational Imperatives is a story of colonization and connection, reaching across nations and empires in its examination of a Southeast Asian space under US sovereignty. It presents an innovative new portrait of the American empire's global dimensions and the many ways they shaped the colonial encounter in the Southern Philippines.
Download or read book The Imperative of Integration written by Elizabeth Anderson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-21 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful new argument for reviving the ideal of racial integration More than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial America, but The Imperative of Integration indicates otherwise. Elizabeth Anderson demonstrates that, despite progress toward racial equality, African Americans remain disadvantaged on virtually all measures of well-being. Segregation remains a key cause of these problems, and Anderson skillfully shows why racial integration is needed to address these issues. Weaving together extensive social science findings—in economics, sociology, and psychology—with political theory, this book provides a compelling argument for reviving the ideal of racial integration to overcome injustice and inequality, and to build a better democracy. Considering the effects of segregation and integration across multiple social arenas, Anderson exposes the deficiencies of racial views on both the right and the left. She reveals the limitations of conservative explanations for black disadvantage in terms of cultural pathology within the black community and explains why color blindness is morally misguided. Multicultural celebrations of group differences are also not enough to solve our racial problems. Anderson provides a distinctive rationale for affirmative action as a tool for promoting integration, and explores how integration can be practiced beyond affirmative action. Offering an expansive model for practicing political philosophy in close collaboration with the social sciences, this book is a trenchant examination of how racial integration can lead to a more robust and responsive democracy.
Download or read book The Invention of Creativity written by Andreas Reckwitz and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary society has seen an unprecedented rise in both the demand and the desire to be creative, to bring something new into the world. Once the reserve of artistic subcultures, creativity has now become a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society. In this new book, cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz investigates how the ideal of creativity has grown into a major social force, from the art of the avant-garde and postmodernism to the ‘creative industries’ and the innovation economy, the psychology of creativity and self-growth, the media representation of creative stars, and the urban design of ‘creative cities’. Where creativity is often assumed to be a force for good, Reckwitz looks critically at how this imperative has developed from the 1970s to the present day. Though we may well perceive creativity as the realization of some natural and innate potential within us, it has rather to be understood within the structures of a very specific culture of the new in late modern society. The Invention of Creativity is a bold and refreshing counter to conventional wisdom that shows how our age is defined by radical and restrictive processes of social aestheticization. It will be of great interest to those working in a variety of disciplines, from cultural and social theory to art history and aesthetics.
Download or read book Jihad vs McWorld written by Benjamin Barber and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-04-21 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jihad vs. McWorld is a groundbreaking work, an elegant and illuminating analysis of the central conflict of our times: consumerist capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism. These diametrically opposed but strangely intertwined forces are tearing apart--and bringing together--the world as we know it, undermining democracy and the nation-state on which it depends. On the one hand, consumer capitalism on the global level is rapidly dissolving the social and economic barriers between nations, transforming the world's diverse populations into a blandly uniform market. On the other hand, ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds are fragmenting the political landscape into smaller and smaller tribal units. Jihad vs. McWorld is the term that distinguished writer and political scientist Benjamin R. Barber has coined to describe the powerful and paradoxical interdependence of these forces. In this important new book, he explores the alarming repercussions of this potent dialectic for democracy. A work of persuasive originality and penetrating insight, Jihad vs. McWorld holds up a sharp, clear lens to the dangerous chaos of the post-Cold War world. Critics and political leaders have already heralded Benjamin R. Barber's work for its bold vision and moral courage. Jihad vs. McWorld is an essential text for anyone who wants to understand our troubled present and the crisis threatening our future.
Download or read book The Visual Imperative written by Lindy Ryan and published by Morgan Kaufmann. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Data is powerful. It separates leaders from laggards and it drives business disruption, transformation, and reinvention. Today's most progressive companies are using the power of data to propel their industries into new areas of innovation, specialization, and optimization. The horsepower of new tools and technologies have provided more opportunities than ever to harness, integrate, and interact with massive amounts of disparate data for business insights and value – something that will only continue in the era of the Internet of Things. And, as a new breed of tech-savvy and digitally native knowledge workers rise to the ranks of data scientist and visual analyst, the needs and demands of the people working with data are changing, too. The world of data is changing fast. And, it's becoming more visual. Visual insights are becoming increasingly dominant in information management, and with the reinvigorated role of data visualization, this imperative is a driving force to creating a visual culture of data discovery. The traditional standards of data visualizations are making way for richer, more robust and more advanced visualizations and new ways of seeing and interacting with data. However, while data visualization is a critical tool to exploring and understanding bigger and more diverse and dynamic data, by understanding and embracing our human hardwiring for visual communication and storytelling and properly incorporating key design principles and evolving best practices, we take the next step forward to transform data visualizations from tools into unique visual information assets. - Discusses several years of in-depth industry research and presents vendor tools, approaches, and methodologies in discovery, visualization, and visual analytics - Provides practicable and use case-based experience from advisory work with Fortune 100 and 500 companies across multiple verticals - Presents the next-generation of visual discovery, data storytelling, and the Five Steps to Data Storytelling with Visualization - Explains the Convergence of Visual Analytics and Visual discovery, including how to use tools such as R in statistical and analytic modeling - Covers emerging technologies such as streaming visualization in the IOT (Internet of Things) and streaming animation
Download or read book Literacy as a Moral Imperative written by Rebecca Powell and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 1999-09-08 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important new book on literacy and teaching practices, education scholar and former schoolteacher Rebecca Powell argues that the decisions we make about literacy in a pluralistic society are fundamentally moral ones, either supporting inequitable power relationships, or seeking to transform them. Powell explores the underlying ideological assumptions of Oschooled literacyO and examines the ways teaching practices create tensions in the lives of students—tensions that often result in alienation and educational failure, particularly among those whose cultural knowledge and language tends to be marginalized in our nationOs schools. While primarily ground in critical theory, this volume also draws from multicultural and holistic perspectives in the teaching of written and oral language and addresses the link between whole language and critical pedagogy. Thus, the text is both theoretical and practical. Powell effectively argues that literacy instruction should encourage social responsibility and civic action, should enable students and teachers to understand the transformative potential of language, and should nurture a culture of compassion and care.
Download or read book The Resilience Imperative written by Michael Lewis and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the economy can only be improved through major changes that will make it more decentralized and cooperative, including such novel ideas as energy self-sufficiency, interest-free financing, affordable housing, local food systems and more. Original.
Download or read book The Creedal Imperative written by Carl R. Trueman and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2012-09-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a number of high profile scholars converting to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy while a trend in the laity expresses an eclectic hunger for tradition. The status and role of confessions stands at the center of the debate within evangelicalism today as many resonate with the call to return to Christianity's ancient roots. Carl Trueman offers an analysis of why creeds and confessions are necessary, how they have developed over time, and how they can function in the church of today and tomorrow. He writes primarily for evangelicals who are not particularly confessional in their thinking yet who belong to confessional churches—Baptists, independents, etc.—so that they will see more clearly the usefulness of the church's tradition.
Download or read book Hope Is an Imperative written by David W. Orr and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author has championed the cause of ecological literacy in higher education, helping to establish and shape the field of ecological design, and working to raise awareness of the threats to future generations posed by humanity's current unsustainable trajectory.This volume brings together his most important works.
Download or read book The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity written by Margaret S. Archer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do young people want from life? This book shows how the 'internal conversation' guides individual choices.
Download or read book The End of Illusions written by Andreas Reckwitz and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-28 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.
Download or read book Culture in Networks written by Paul McLean and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, interest in networks is growing by leaps and bounds, in both scientific discourse and popular culture. Networks are thought to be everywhere – from the architecture of our brains to global transportation systems. And networks are especially ubiquitous in the social world: they provide us with social support, account for the emergence of new trends and markets, and foster social protest, among other functions. Besides, who among us is not familiar with Facebook, Twitter, or, for that matter, World of Warcraft, among the myriad emerging forms of network-based virtual social interaction? It is common to think of networks simply in structural terms – the architecture of connections among objects, or the circuitry of a system. But social networks in particular are thoroughly interwoven with cultural things, in the form of tastes, norms, cultural products, styles of communication, and much more. What exactly flows through the circuitry of social networks? How are people's identities and cultural practices shaped by network structures? And, conversely, how do people's identities, their beliefs about the social world, and the kinds of messages they send affect the network structures they create? This book is designed to help readers think about how and when culture and social networks systematically penetrate one another, helping to shape each other in significant ways.
Download or read book The Augustinian Imperative written by William E. Connolly and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entirely new interpretation of one of the most seminal and widely read figures in the history of political thought, The Augustinian Imperative is also 'an archaeological investigation into the intellectual foundation of liberal societies.' Drawing support from Nietzsche and Foucault, Connolly argues that the Augustinian Imperative contains unethical implications: its carriers too often convert living signs that threaten their ontological self-confidence into modes of otherness to be condemned, punished, or converted in order to restore that confidence. With a lucidity and rhetorical power that makes it readily accessible, The Augustinian Imperative examines Augustine's enactment of the Imperative, explores alternative ethico-political orientations, and subsequently reveals much about the politics of morality in the modern age.
