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Shame and necessity
No full textWe tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery.The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours.Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. Shame and Necessity gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world
Proletarians of the North: a history of Mexican industrial workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933
No full textBetween the end of World War I and the Great Depression, over 58,000 Mexicans journeyed to the Midwest in search of employment. Many found work in agriculture, but thousands more joined the growing ranks of the industrial proletariat. Throughout the northern Midwest, and especially in Detroit, Mexican workers entered steel mills, packing houses, and auto plants, becoming part of the modern American working class.Zaragosa Vargas's work focuses on this little-known feature in the history of Chicanos and American labor. In relating the experiences of Mexicans in workplace and neighborhood, and in showing the roles of Mexican women, the Catholic Church, and labor unions, Vargas enriches our knowledge of immigrant urban life. His is an important work that will be welcomed by historians of Chicano Studies and American labor
University of California Press eScholarship editions in process
No full textIn this innovative analysis of medicine and disease in colonial India, David Arnold explores the vital role of the state in medical and public health activities, arguing that Western medicine became a critical battleground between the colonized and the colonizers.Focusing on three major epidemic diseases - smallpox, cholera, and plague - Arnold analyzes the impact of medical interventionism. He demonstrates that Western medicine as practiced in India was not simply transferred from West to East, but was also fashioned in response to local needs and Indian conditions.By emphasizing this colonial dimension of medicine, Arnold highlights the centrality of the body to political authority in British India and shows how medicine both influenced and articulated the intrinsic contradictions of colonial rule
Carnal Israel: reading sex in Talmudic culture
No full textBeginning with a startling endorsement of the patristic view of Judaism - that it was a "carnal" religion, in contrast to the spiritual vision of the Church - Daniel Boyarin argues that rabbinic Judaism was based on a set of assumptions about the human body that were profoundly different from those of Christianity. The body - specifically, the sexualized body - could not be renounced, for the Rabbis believed as a religious principle in the generation of offspring and hence in intercourse sanctioned by marriage.This belief bound men and women together and made impossible the various modes of gender separation practiced by early Christians. The commitment to coupling did not imply a resolution of the unequal distribution of power that characterized relations between the sexes in all late-antique societies. But Boyarin argues strenuously that the male construction and treatment of women in rabbinic Judaism did not rest on a loathing of the female body. Thus, without ignoring the currents of sexual domination that course through the Talmudic texts, Boyarin insists that the rabbinic account of human sexuality, different from that of the Hellenistic Judaisms and Pauline Christianity, has something important and empowering to teach us today
University of California Press eScholarship editions in process
No full textAmong the oldest buildings in the United States, the churches of Spanish New Mexico - made of earth, of stone, of wood - are the surprisingly fragile reminders of a unique amalgam of Spanish architectural ideas and native American Pueblo culture. This book surveys the land and rivers, the people and ideas, that led to this compelling religious architecture; it is also a guide to visiting these churches today.In the ninth century the Anasazi, progenitors of the Pueblo peoples, constructed refined architectural complexes at Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. Contact with the Spanish in the late 1500s transformed the world of these indigenous peoples, changing their agricultural and living patterns - as well as religious practices. These changes were manifest architecturally in the sanctuaries the Spanish constructed as missions for the Indians or as parish churches for themselves. First built roughly between 1600 and 1829, but continuing to be rebuilt into this century, they were made of the very materials composing the land itself.In Part I, Marc Treib addresses the geographical, anthropological, and architectural aspects of church building in New Mexico and provides background on the church as both an institution and a building type. Part II presents thirty churches in depth and discusses such topics as sitting, construction in adobe and stone, the use of light, ornamentation, and the issues surrounding restoration. Sanctuaries of Spanish New Mexico is the only book in print to include all the major church sites still extant. Richly illustrated, with specially prepared plans of the churches, it will be welcomed by architectural historians and anyone with an interest in the American Southwest
Imagining development: economic ideas in Peru's "fictitious prosperity" of guano, 1840-1880
No full textRetelling the saga of Peru's nineteenth-century age of guano, Paul Gootenberg provides the first book in English to explore the historical genealogy of Latin America's postcolonial economic thought. He scrutinizes the mentalities, ideas, and visions that led the country down an ill-fated path of export liberalism. The surprising diversity, vitality, and subtlety of Peruvian economic thinking challenges images of Latin American liberalism as a borrowed, impoverished, and narrow conception of material progress.By closely weaving together intellectual and social history and a multitude of forgotten texts, as well as trends in elite and popular and European and national cultures, Gootenberg offers a newly integrated approach to the long-neglected field of Latin American economic ideas
The inner quarters: marriage and the lives of Chinese women in the Sung period
No full textThe Sung Dynasty (960-1279) was a paradoxical era for Chinese women. This was a time when footbinding spread, and Confucian scholars began to insist that it was better for a widow to starve than to remarry. Yet there were also improvements in women's status in marriage and property rights. In this thoroughly original work, one of the most respected scholars of premodern China brings to life what it was like to be a woman in Sung times, from having a marriage arranged, serving parents-in-law, rearing children, and coping with concubines, to deciding what to do if widowed.Focusing on marriage, Patricia Buckley Ebrey views family life from the perspective of women. She argues that the ideas, attitudes, and practices that constituted marriage shaped women's lives, providing the context in which they could interpret the opportunities open to them, negotiate their relationships with others, and accommodate or resist those around them.Ebrey questions whether women's situations actually deteriorated in the Sung, linking their experiences to widespread social, political, economic, and cultural changes of this period. She draws from advice books, biographies, government documents, and medical treatises to show that although the family continued to be patrilineal and patriarchal, women found ways to exert their power and authority. No other book explores the history of women in pre-twentieth-century China with such energy and depth
The power of the gun: the emergence of modern Chinese warlordism
No full textThis detailed study offers a new interpretation of the emergence of warlordism in early twentieth-century China. Focusing on the provinces of Hunan and Hubei, Edward McCord shows how the repeated use of the military to settle disputes over the structure and allocation of political power in the early Republic ultimately thwarted the consolidation of civil authority. Warlordism flourished as military commanders took advantage of the growing militarization of politics to establish their dominance over early Republican government.McCord's study brings into sharp focus the social and political context of warlordism and is an essential bridge completing the narrative of events between two revolutionary eras. With the role of the military in modern Chinese politics receiving renewed attention today, this work is especially timely
Theory of culture
No full textWith the increasing focus on the concept of culture by sociologists and other social scientists, there is now a need for clarifying and developing theoretical perspectives on this issue. The contributors to this volume have answered this call, each adding new insight to the debate over culture, its definition, and its relationship with other basic categories in sociological theory. Along the way they touch on other fundamental issues, such as the interrelationship of culture with society, the human personality, and the wider environment of the human condition
Freud and his critics
No full textWars against Freud have been waged along virtually every front during the past decade. Now Paul Robinson takes on three of Freud's most formidable critics, mounting a thoughtful, witty, and ultimately devastating critique of the historian of science Frank Sulloway, the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson, and the philosopher Adolf Grünbaum.Frank Sulloway contends that Freud took most of his ideas from Darwin and other contemporary thinkers - that he was something of a closet biologist. Jeffrey Masson charges that Freud caved in to peer pressure when he abandoned his early seduction theory (which Masson believes was correct) in favor of the theory of infantile sexuality. Adolf Grünbaum impugns Freud's claim to have grounded his ideas - especially the idea of the unconscious - on solid empirical foundations.Under Robinson's rigorous cross-examination, the evidence of these three accusers proves ambiguous and their arguments biased by underlying assumptions and ideological commitments. Robinson concludes that the anti-Freudian writings of Sulloway, Masson, and Grünbaum reveal more about their authors' prejudices - and about the Zeitgeist of the past decade - than they do about Freud.Beautifully crafted and full of surprises, Robinson's work is a compelling defense of one of history's most original and powerful minds. Freud and His Critics will earn an enduring place in the raging Freudian debate