Download or read book Goods Power History written by Arnold J. Bauer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-04-30 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the history of material culture and consumption in Latin America over the past 500 years.
Download or read book The Sources of Social Power Volume 1 A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 written by Michael Mann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-04-30 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distinguishing four sources of power in human societies - ideological, economic, military and political - 'The Sources of Social Power' traces their interrelations throughout human history. Volume 2 deals with power relations between the Industrial Revolution and the First World War.
Download or read book The Power of a Single Number written by Philipp Lepenies and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely used since the mid-twentieth century, GDP (gross domestic product) has become the world's most powerful statistical indicator of national development and progress. Practically all governments adhere to the idea that GDP growth is a primary economic target, and while criticism of this measure has grown, neither its champions nor its detractors deny its central importance in our political culture. In The Power of a Single Number, Philipp Lepenies recounts the lively history of GDP's political acceptance—and eventual dominance. Locating the origins of GDP measurements in Renaissance England, Lepenies explores the social and political factors that originally hindered its use. It was not until the early 1900s that an ingenuous lone-wolf economist revived and honed GDP's statistical approach. These ideas were then extended by John Maynard Keynes, and a more focused study of national income was born. American economists furthered this work by emphasizing GDP's ties to social well-being, setting the stage for its ascent. GDP finally achieved its singular status during World War II, assuming the importance it retains today. Lepenies's absorbing account helps us understand the personalities and popular events that propelled GDP to supremacy and clarifies current debates over the wisdom of the number's rule.
Download or read book Ruling America written by Steve Fraser and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-15 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruling America offers a panoramic history of our country's ruling elites from the time of the American Revolution to the present. At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people? In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience. They explore how elites came into existence, how they established their dominance over public affairs, and how their rule came to an end. The contributors analyze the elite coalition that led the Revolution and then examine the antebellum planters of the South and the merchant patricians of the North. Later chapters vividly portray the Gilded Age "robber barons," the great finance capitalists in the age of J. P. Morgan, and the foreign-policy "Establishment" of the post-World War II years. The book concludes with a dissection of the corporate-led counter-revolution against the New Deal characteristic of the Reagan and Bush era. Rarely in the last half-century has one book afforded such a comprehensive look at the ways elite wealth and power have influenced the American experiment with democracy. At a time when the distribution of wealth and power has never been more unequal, Ruling America is of urgent contemporary relevance.
Download or read book Sweetness and Power written by Sidney W. Mintz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1986-08-05 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times. "Like sugar, Mintz is persuasive, and his detailed history is a real treat." -San Francisco Chronicle
Download or read book Buying Power written by Lawrence B. Glickman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-06-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive history of consumer activism, Buying Power traces the lineage of this political tradition back to our nation’s founding, revealing that Americans used purchasing power to support causes and punish enemies long before the word boycott even entered our lexicon. Taking the Boston Tea Party as his starting point, Lawrence Glickman argues that the rejection of British imports by revolutionary patriots inaugurated a continuous series of consumer boycotts, campaigns for safe and ethical consumption, and efforts to make goods more broadly accessible. He explores abolitionist-led efforts to eschew slave-made goods, African American consumer campaigns against Jim Crow, a 1930s refusal of silk from fascist Japan, and emerging contemporary movements like slow food. Uncovering previously unknown episodes and analyzing famous events from a fresh perspective, Glickman illuminates moments when consumer activism intersected with political and civil rights movements. He also sheds new light on activists’ relationship with the consumer movement, which gave rise to lobbies like the National Consumers League and Consumers Union as well as ill-fated legislation to create a federal Consumer Protection Agency.
Download or read book The Power of the Past written by Hal Brands and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scholars and policymakers explore how history influences foreign policy and offer insights on how the study of the past can more usefully serve the present. History, with its insights, analogies, and narratives, is central to the ways that the United States interacts with the world. Historians and policymakers, however, rarely engage one another as effectively or fruitfully as they might. This book bridges that divide, bringing together leading scholars and policymakers to address the essential questions surrounding the history-policy relationship including Mark Lawrence on the numerous, and often contradictory, historical lessons that American observers have drawn from the Vietnam War; H. W. Brands on the role of analogies in U.S. policy during the Persian Gulf crisis and war of 1990–91; and Jeremi Suri on Henry Kissinger's powerful use of history.
Download or read book Culture Power History written by Nicholas B. Dirks and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual radicalism of the 1960s spawned a new set of questions about the role and nature of "the political" in social life, questions that have since revolutionized nearly every field of thought, from literary criticism through anthropology to the philosophy of science. Michel Foucault in particular made us aware that whatever our functionally defined "roles" in society, we are constantly negotiating questions of authority and the control of the definitions of reality. Such insights have led theorists to challenge concepts that have long formed the very underpinnings of their disciplines. By exploring some of the most debated of these concepts--"culture," "power," and "history"--this reader offers an enriching perspective on social theory in the contemporary moment. Organized around these three concepts, Culture/ Power/History brings together both classic and new essays that address Foucault's "new economy of power relations" in a number of different, contestatory directions. Representing innovative work from various disciplines and sites of study, from taxidermy to Madonna, the book seeks to affirm the creative possibilities available in a time marked by growing uncertainty about established disciplinary forms of knowledge and by the increasing fluidity of the boundaries between them. The book is introduced by a major synthetic essay by the editors, which calls attention to the most significant issues enlivening theoretical discourse today. The editors seek not only to encourage scholars to reflect anew on the course of social theory, but also to orient newcomers to this area of inquiry. The essays are contributed by Linda Alcoff ("Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism"), Sally Alexander ("Women, Class, and Sexual Differences in the 1830s and 1840s"), Tony Bennett ("The Exhibitionary Complex"), Pierre Bourdieu ("Structures, Habitus, Power"), Nicholas B. Dirks ("Ritual and Resistance"), Geoff Eley ("Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures"), Michel Foucault (Two Lectures), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ("Authority, [White] Power and the [Black] Critic"), Stephen Greenblatt ("The Circulation of Social Energy"), Ranajit Guha ("The Prose of Counter-Insurgency"), Stuart Hall ("Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms"), Susan Harding ("The Born-Again Telescandals"), Donna Haraway ("Teddy Bear Patriarchy"), Dick Hebdige ("After the Masses"), Susan McClary ("Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshly"), Sherry B. Ortner ("Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties"), Marshall Sahlins ("Cosmologies of Capitalism"), Elizabeth G. Traube ("Secrets of Success in Postmodern Society"), Raymond Williams (selections from Marxism and Literature), and Judith Williamson ("Family, Education, Photography").
Download or read book Private Power for the Public Good written by Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and published by College Board. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Consuming Power written by David E. Nye and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1999-02-18 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. How did the United States become the world's largest consumer of energy? David Nye shows that this is less a question about the development of technology than it is a question about the development of culture. In Consuming Power, Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. He looks at how these activities changed as new energy systems were constructed, from colonial times to recent years. He also shows how, as Americans incorporated new machines and processes into their lives, they became ensnared in power systems that were not easily changed: they made choices about the conduct of their lives, and those choices accumulated to produce a consuming culture. Nye examines a sequence of large systems that acquired and then lost technological momentum over the course of American history, including water power, steam power, electricity, the internal-combustion engine, atomic power, and computerization. He shows how each system became part of a larger set of social constructions through its links to the home, the factory, and the city. The result is a social history of America as seen through the lens of energy consumption.
Download or read book Silencing the Past written by Michel-Rolph Trouillot and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silencing the Past is a thought-provoking analysis of historical narrative. Taking examples ranging from the Haitian Revolution to Columbus Day, Michel-Rolph Trouillot demonstrates how power operates, often invisibly, at all stages in the making of history to silence certain voices. "Makes the postmodernist debate come alive." --Choice "Trouillot, a widely respected scholar of Haitian history . . . is a first-rate scholar with provocative ideas . . . Serious students of history should find his work a feast for the mind." --Jay Freedman, Booklist "Elegantly written and richly allusive, . . . Silencing the Past is an important contribution to the anthropology of history. Its most lasting impression is made perhaps by Trouillot's own voice--endlessly agile, sometimes cuttingly funny, but always evocative in a direct and powerful, almost poetic way." --Donald L. Donham, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute "A sparkling interrogation of the past. . . . A beautifully written, superior book." --Foreign Affairs "Silencing the Past is a polished personal essay on the meanings of history. . . . [It] is filled with wisdom and humanity." --Bernard Mergen, American Studies International "An eloquent book." --Choice "Written with clarity, wit, and style throughout, this book is for everyone interested in historical culture." --Civilization "A beautifully written book, exciting in its challenges." --Eric R. Wolf "Aphoristic and witty, . . . a hard-nosed look at the soft edges of public discourse about the past." --Arjun Appadurai
Download or read book Crap written by Wendy A. Woloson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-10-05 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crap. We all have it. Filling drawers. Overflowing bins and baskets. Proudly displayed or stuffed in boxes in basements and garages. Big and small. Metal, fabric, and a whole lot of plastic. So much crap. Abundant cheap stuff is about as American as it gets. And it turns out these seemingly unimportant consumer goods offer unique insights into ourselves—our values and our desires. In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America, Wendy A. Woloson takes seriously the history of objects that are often cynically-made and easy to dismiss: things not made to last; things we don't really need; things we often don't even really want. Woloson does not mock these ordinary, everyday possessions but seeks to understand them as a way to understand aspects of ourselves, socially, culturally, and economically: Why do we—as individuals and as a culture—possess these things? Where do they come from? Why do we want them? And what is the true cost of owning them? Woloson tells the history of crap from the late eighteenth century up through today, exploring its many categories: gadgets, knickknacks, novelty goods, mass-produced collectibles, giftware, variety store merchandise. As Woloson shows, not all crap is crappy in the same way—bric-a-brac is crappy in a different way from, say, advertising giveaways, which are differently crappy from commemorative plates. Taking on the full brilliant and depressing array of crappy material goods, the book explores the overlooked corners of the American market and mindset, revealing the complexity of our relationship with commodity culture over time. By studying crap rather than finely made material objects, Woloson shows us a new way to truly understand ourselves, our national character, and our collective psyche. For all its problems, and despite its disposability, our crap is us.
Download or read book Coffee Society and Power in Latin America written by William Roseberry and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In January 1927 Gus Comstock, a barbershop porter in the small Minnesota town of Fergus Falls, drank eighty cups of coffee in seven hours and fifteen minutes. The New York Times reported that near the end, amid a cheering crowd, the man's "gulps were labored, but a physician examining him found him in pretty good shape." The event was part of a marathon coffee-drinking spree set off two years earlier by news from the Commerce Department that coffee imports to the United States amounted to five hundred cups per year per person. In Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America, a distinguished international group of historians, anthropologists, and sociologists examine the production, processing, and marketing of this important commodity. Using coffee as a common denominator and focusing on landholding patterns, labor mobilization, class structure, political power, and political ideologies, the authors examine how Latin American countries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries responded to the growing global demand for coffee. This unique volume offers an integrated comparative study of class formation in the coffee zones of Latin America as they were incorporated into the world economy. It offers a new theoretical and methodological approach to comparative historical analysis and will serve as a critique and counter to those who stress the homogenizing tendencies of export agriculture. The book will be of interest not only to experts on coffee economies but also to students and scholars of Latin America, labor history, the economics ofdevelopment, and political economy.
Download or read book Balance of Power in World History written by S. Kaufman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-08-22 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The balance of power is one of the most influential ideas in international relations, yet it has never been comprehensively examined in pre-modern or non-European contexts. This book redresses this imbalance. The authors present eight new case studies of balancing and balancing failure in pre-modern and non-European international systems.
Download or read book Power Style written by Dominique Gaulme and published by Flammarion-Pere Castor. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This exploration of regalia throughout the world and the ages, and the powerful figures who exemplify each style -- from the ceremonial robes of Chinese emperors to the wigs and stockings of seventeenth-century couriers to the casual college-inspired blazers and sunglasses of American politicians such as JFK -- provides a fascinating and comprehensive view of the sociological aspects of clothing. If there is truth in the saying 'tell me what you were and I'll tell you who you are,' then it is also true to add, 'I'll tell you what kind of society you live in." -- Dust jacket.
Download or read book The Power of Objects in Eighteenth Century British America written by Jennifer Van Horn and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods. The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to gravestones, dressing furniture, and prosthetic devices—to explore how elite American consumers assembled objects to form a new civil society on the margins of the British Empire. In this interdisciplinary transatlantic study, artifacts emerge as key players in the formation of Anglo-American communities and eventually of American citizenship. Deftly interweaving analysis of images with furniture, architecture, clothing, and literary works, Van Horn reconstructs the networks of goods that bound together consumers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Moving beyond emulation and the desire for social status as the primary motivators for consumption, Van Horn shows that Anglo-Americans' material choices were intimately bound up with their efforts to distance themselves from Native Americans and African Americans. She also traces women's contested place in forging provincial culture. As encountered through a woman's application of makeup at her dressing table or an amputee's donning of a wooden leg after the Revolutionary War, material artifacts were far from passive markers of rank or political identification. They made Anglo-American society.
Download or read book The Power of Gold written by Peter L. Bernstein and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-12-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incorporating myth, history and contemporary investigation, Bernstein tells the story of how human beings have become intoxicated, obsessed, enriched, impoverished, humbled and proud for the sake of gold. From the past to the future, Bernstein's portrayal of gold is intimately linked to the character of humankind.
