Download or read book Crossing the Postmodern Divide written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossing the Postmodern Divide is a guide for all those perplexed by what it means to live at the edge of an era. Albert Borgmann writes for everyone seeking to understand the sprawling critique of modernity that informs virtually every aspect of life at the end of the twentieth century, from philosophy, social theory, and the arts to everyday worlds of work and family and community. In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. With exceptional clarity, Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life. We have lost faith in the modern project. Our society is disenchanted with a world in which science and technology have become tools for destruction; where rampant individualism is a mask for privilege and greed; and where the institutions of public life are emptied of meaning and purpose. In offering alternatives to modernity's exhausted traditions, alternatives already emerging in everyday life, Borgmann moves this critique to its next stage. Whether in the increasingly flexible organization of work, the enabling technologies of the personal computer, or the return to small-scale communities more in harmony with the demands of nature, he finds us beginning to reorder our social worlds. Crossing the Postmodern Divide also offers a powerfully articulated vision of what a postmodern culture has in store. This new era, at its best, would enable participation, acknowledge limits, and restore to human life the importance of the local, the sacred, and the communal. The critique of modernism Borgmann portrays goes beyond the empty language of postmodern discourse. It speaks to real dissatisfactions with the quality of our world and strives to provide us with a helpful view of the postmodern divide and what lies beyond it.
Download or read book Crossing the Postmodern Divide written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Albert Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life, and goes beyond the language of postmodern discourse to offer a powerfully articulated vision of what this new era, at its best, has in store. "[This] thoughtful book is the first remotely realistic map out of the post modern labyrinth."—Joseph Coates, The Chicago Tribune "Rather astoundingly large-minded vision of the nature of humanity, civilization and science."—Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-14 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blending social analysis and philosophy, Albert Borgmann maintains that technology creates a controlling pattern in our lives. This pattern, discernible even in such an inconspicuous action as switching on a stereo, has global effects: it sharply divides life into labor and leisure, it sustains the industrial democracies, and it fosters the view that the earth itself is a technological device. He argues that technology has served us as well in conquering hunger and disease, but that when we turn to it for richer experiences, it leads instead to a life dominated by effortless and thoughtless consumption. Borgmann does not reject technology but calls for public conversation about the nature of the good life. He counsels us to make room in a technological age for matters of ultimate concern—things and practices that engage us in their own right.
Download or read book New Worlds New Technologies New Issues written by Stephen H. Cutcliffe and published by Lehigh University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, fifteen scholars from the United States, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Colombia discuss the social implications of new technologies. Their essays address the cultural worlds that crystallize around technologies, the challenges to democracy that they pose, and the responsibility of modern technology for forcing a public response to new social and moral issues. Three themes define the three sections into which the volume is divided: "New Worlds," "New Technologies," and "New Issues." The essays in the section "New Worlds" range from optimism that new technologies will produce a better world than that of 1992, through a nonjudgmental discussion of the transformation of our "lifeworld" that new technologies are effecting, to deep concern for the viability of the world that modern technology has already created. In "New Technologies," the focus is on political responses to modern technologies. The authors in this section see the challenge to understanding and controlling our technological world in reshaping existing relations of social power and authority, and in creating new institutions more adequate to the sociopolitical realities of the process of technological innovation. While the contributors in the first two sections of the volume argue that broad changes in values and institutions are preconditions of a more beneficent relationship among people, nature, and technology, those in the section "New Issues" adopt narrower, more specific, viewpoints. Their essays address the political values underlying the Deep Ecology movement, the ethics of military technologies, the capacity of democratic institutions for a public role in setting technology policies, and science and technology literacy mechanisms. Collectively, these essays reflect the growing international concern with the role played by technological innovation in a rapidly changing world, and they point toward the formulation of concrete political platforms for informed social responses to the innovation process.
Download or read book Travels with Ernest written by Laurel Richardson and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laurel Richardson and Ernest Lockridge-accomplished sociologist and published novelist-explore the fascinating interplay between literary and ethnographic writing. The exciting result is an intriguing experimental text that simultaneously delves into, reveals, simplifies, and complicates methodologies of writing and conveying experience. This boundary-crossing text will provide an ideal platform for students and professors interested in understanding and exploring the absorbing complexities and possibilities of ethnographic writing and creative nonfiction.
Download or read book Bridging the Divide written by Dr. Robert L. Millet and published by Monkfish Book Publishing. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meetings between Mormons and Evangelicals break new ground in interfaith dialogue.
Download or read book Technology and the Good Life written by Eric Higgs and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-11-15 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we use technology in the pursuit of a good life, or are we doomed to having our lives organized and our priorities set by the demands of machines and systems? How can philosophy help us to make technology a servant rather than a master? Technology and the Good Life? uses a careful collective analysis of Albert Borgmann's controversial and influential ideas as a jumping-off point from which to address questions such as these about the role and significance of technology in our lives. Contributors both sympathetic and critical examine Borgmann's work, especially his "device paradigm"; apply his theories to new areas such as film, agriculture, design, and ecological restoration; and consider the place of his thought within philosophy and technology studies more generally. Because this collection carefully investigates the issues at the heart of how we can take charge of life with technology, it will be a landmark work not just for philosophers of technology but for students and scholars in the many disciplines concerned with science and technology studies.
Download or read book Real American Ethics written by Albert Borgmann and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is a wonderful and magnificent country that affords its citizens the broadest freedoms and the greatest prosperity in the world. But it also has its share of warts. It is embroiled in a war that many of its citizens consider unjust and even illegal. It continues to ravage the natural environment and ignore poverty both at home and abroad...
Download or read book Power Failure written by Albert Borgmann and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2003-06 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to redeem and restrain technology through everyday Christian practices and sacraments such as communal celebrations, shared meals, and daily Scripture reading.
Download or read book Metamorphoses written by Rosi Braidotti and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-10 with total page 747 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discussions about the ethical, political and human implications of the postmodernist condition have been raging for longer than most of us care to remember. They have been especially fierce within feminism. After a brief flirtation with postmodern thinking in the 1980s, mainstream feminist circles seem to have turned their back on the staple notions of poststructuralist philosophy. Metamorphoses takes stock of the situation and attempts to reset priorities within the poststructuralist feminist agenda. Cross-referring in a creative way to Deleuze's and Irigaray's respective philosophies of difference, the book addresses key notions such as embodiment, immanence, sexual difference, nomadism and the materiality of the subject. Metamorphoses also focuses on the implications of these theories for cultural criticism and a redefinition of politics. It provides a vivid overview of contemporary culture, with special emphasis on technology, the monstrous imaginary and the recurrent obsession with 'the flesh' in the age of techno-bodies. This highly original contribution to current debates is written for those who find changes and transformations challenging and necessary. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, feminist theory, gender studies, sociology, social theory and cultural studies.
Download or read book Holding On to Reality written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holding On to Reality is a brilliant history of information, from its inception in the natural world to its role in the transformation of culture to the current Internet mania and is attendant assets and liabilities. Drawing on the history of ideas, the details of information technology, and the boundaries of the human condition, Borgmann illuminates the relationship between things and signs, between reality and information. "[Borgmann] has offered a stunningly clear definition of information in Holding On to Reality. . . . He leaves room for little argument, unless one wants to pose the now vogue objection: I guess it depends on what you mean by nothing."—Paul Bennett, Wired "A superb anecdotal analysis of information for a hype-addled age."—New Scientist "This insightful and poetic reflection on the changing nature of information is a wonderful antidote to much of the current hype about the 'information revolution.' Borgmann reminds us that whatever the reality of our time, we need 'a balance of signs and things' in our lives."—Margaret Wertheim, LA Weekly
Download or read book Tenth of December written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prize-winning, New York Times bestselling short story collection from the internationally bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo 'The best book you'll read this year' New York Times 'Dazzlingly surreal stories about a failing America' Sunday Times WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx(TM) in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.
Download or read book Covering the Border War written by Sang Hea Kil and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-11-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering the Border War: How the News Media Create Crime, Race, Nation, and the USA-Mexico Divide examines the notion of the body politic in border newspaper coverage of the USA-Mexico divide and how the nation and immigration are racially imagined in crime news discourse, where whiteness is associated with order and brownness is associated with disorder in a variety of imaginative, nativist ways. By applying critical discourse analysis methodology to the Los Angeles Times, Arizona Republic, Albuquerque Journal, and Houston Chronicle during a peak epoch of border militarization policies (1993–2006), brownness emerges through a news crime frame that reflexively shows the values and meanings of whiteness and the nation. At the body scale, border crossings threaten the whiteness of the national body through suggestions of rape and disfigurement. Border news discourse feminizes the nation with nurturing resources and services under threat of immigrant “rape” as well as expresses racial anxiety about a “changing face” of the nation. Border news coverage constructs immigrants as home intruders at the house scale, both human and animal. Whiteness at this scale reflexively signifies a law-abiding, rightful owner of property protecting against criminal trespassing. Brown immigrants are also seen as wild animals, which constructs whiteness burdened with the task of animal management. Whiteness at the regional scale suggests a masculinized, militarized battleground or a settled region threatened by a brown, cataclysmic flood. Finally, the nation scale complements the body scale but in a more contemporary and scientific way. Whiteness reflects a body politic fighting the disease of cancer/immigration in two ways: with an imagined militaristic, immune system and with hi-tech, aggressive operations. This “diseased body politic” communicates whiteness and nativism about the border through discursive border symptoms and border operations that represent the intersection of immunology discourse, the racial construction of the body politic, and anxiety about postmodern economic transformation and its impact on national borders.
Download or read book Movement and Dance in Young Children s Lives written by Adrienne N. Sansom and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the pedagogical landscape of early childhood, physical movement is central to the holistic development of young children. Yet, movement-related experiences and other bodily activities such as play and dance often present contradictions and conundrums for early childhood educators. As a mode of learning, movement has endured a questionable existence despite the evidence of supportive research and theory, which provides sound reasons for the inclusion of movement in early years curricula. Movement and Dance in Young Children's Lives looks at the place of movement in young children's lives and addresses how movement as a form of expression can become dance, thus displacing a reliance on linguistic modes of expression and honoring the agency of the body. It also discusses a variety of concerns and confusions that accompany dance in education, and interprets what this means to students and teachers in teacher education programs and early childhood settings.
Download or read book Postmodern Wetlands written by Rodney James Giblett and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swamps and marshes have traditionally been regarded as places of horror and ill health in western culture - places to be feared, drained and filled. In this wide-ranging study, Rod Giblett examines the swamp from a cross-disciplinary standpoint. Using material from fiction, films and popular culture and drawing on literature, cultural studies, philosophy, social theory, critical geography and medical history, he criticises the urge to drain swamps ('the project of modernity') as masculinist and imperialist.
Download or read book On Being a Theologian of the Cross written by Gerhard O. Forde and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 1997 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gerhard Forde examines the nature of the "theology of the cross, noting what makes it different from other kinds of theology. His starting point is a thorough analysis of Luther's Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, the classic text of the theology of the cross.
Download or read book Disclosing New Worlds written by Charles Spinosa and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1999-02-18 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that human beings are at their best not when they are engaged in abstract reflection, but when they are intensely involved in changing the taken-for-granted, everyday practices in some domain of their culture—that is, when they are making history. Disclosing New Worlds calls for a recovery of a way of being that has always characterized human life at its best. The book argues that human beings are at their best not when they are engaged in abstract reflection, but when they are intensely involved in changing the taken-for-granted, everyday practices in some domain of their culture—that is, when they are making history. History-making, in this account, refers not to wars and transfers of political power, but to changes in the way we understand and deal with ourselves. The authors identify entrepreneurship, democratic action, and the creation of solidarity as the three major arenas in which people make history, and they focus on three prime methods of history-making—reconfiguration, cross-appropriation, and articulation.
