Prickly paradigm press llc us (94 resultados)

Paperback. Condición: New. Reflecting the decline in college courses on Western Civilization, Marshall Sahlins aims to accelerate the trend by reducing "Western Civ" to about two hours. He cites Nietzsche to the effect that deep issues are like cold baths; one should get into and out of them as quickly as possible. The deep issue here is the ancient Western specter of a presocial and antisocial human nature: a supposedly innate self-interest that is represented in our native folklore as the basis or nemesis of cultural order.Yet these Western notions of nature and culture ignore the one truly universal character of human sociality: namely, symbolically constructed kinship relations. Kinsmen are members of one another: they live each other's lives and die each other's deaths. But where the existence of the other is thus incorporated in the being of the self, neither interest, nor agency nor even experience is an individual fact, let alone an egoistic disposition. "Sorry, beg your pardon," Sahlins concludes, "Western civilization has been built on a perverse and mistaken idea of human nature.".…

Paperback. Condición: New. On a second wave of anti-colonial revolutions. State and Capital reign over the Age of Sorrow. We face inequality, pandemics, ethnocide, climate crisis, and mass extinction. Our desire for security and power governs us as State. Our desire for possessions governs us as Capital. Our desires imprison and rule us beings as Unbeing. Yet, from Nagaland to New Zealand, Bhutan to Bolivia, a second wave of anti-colonial revolutions has begun. Arising from assemblies of humans and other-than-humans, these revolutions replace possessive individualism with non-exploitative interdependence. Naga elders, Bhutanese herders and other indigenous communities, feminists, poets, seers, yaks, cranes, vultures, and fungi haunt this pamphlet. The original Subaltern Studies narrated how Indian peasant communities destroyed the British empire. Subaltern Studies 2.0 prophesies the multi-being demos and liberates Being from Unbeing. Re-kin, Re-nomad, Re-animate, Re-wild! The Animist Revolution has come.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Reading the Room is Paul Yamazaki's love letter to the work of bookselling and an engaged life of the mind. Over twenty-four hours, Paul Yamazaki leads us through the stacks of storied City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco; the care and prowess of his approach to book buying; his upbringing in a Japanese American family in Southern California and moving to San Francisco at the height of revolutionary foment; working with legendary figures in the book publishing industry like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sonny Mehta, and others; and his vision for the future of bookselling. Navigating building trust with readers and nurturing relationships across the literary industry, Yamazaki testifies to the value of generosity, sharing knowledge, and dialogue in a life devoted to books.…

Paperback. Condición: New. What kind of meaning can machines make-and why does it matter that it's not the same as ours?Anthropologist Paul Kockelman's Last Words offers a rigorous but accessible account of how large language models actually work-and why the meaning they produce is fundamentally different from human meaning-making. Drawing on the semiotics of C.S. Peirce, Kockelman's witty and insightful pamphlet shows how LLMs are trained to predict word-word relations, not word-world relations, which explains both their uncanny fluency and their systematic blind spots. The result is a compact, essential guide to cutting through the hype: not a dismissal of AI, but a precise account of what it can and cannot do-and who profits from the confusion.…

Paperback. Condición: New. A memoir of reading and working with books by the renowned Booklist editor. With the infectious curiosity of an inveterate bibliophile and the prose of a fine stylist, Donna Seaman charts the course of her early reading years in a book-by-book chronicle of the significance books have held in her life. River of Books recounts Seaman's journey in becoming an editor for Booklist, a reviewer, an author, and a literary citizen, and lays bare how she nourished both body and soul in working with books. Seaman makes palpable the power and self-recognition that she discovered in a life dedicated to reading.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Reflecting the decline in college courses on Western Civilization, Marshall Sahlins aims to accelerate the trend by reducing "Western Civ" to about two hours. He cites Nietzsche to the effect that deep issues are like cold baths; one should get into and out of them as quickly as possible. The deep issue here is the ancient Western specter of a presocial and antisocial human nature: a supposedly innate self-interest that is represented in our native folklore as the basis or nemesis of cultural order.Yet these Western notions of nature and culture ignore the one truly universal character of human sociality: namely, symbolically constructed kinship relations. Kinsmen are members of one another: they live each other's lives and die each other's deaths. But where the existence of the other is thus incorporated in the being of the self, neither interest, nor agency nor even experience is an individual fact, let alone an egoistic disposition. "Sorry, beg your pardon," Sahlins concludes, "Western civilization has been built on a perverse and mistaken idea of human nature.".…

Paperback. Condición: New. What can you say after you say that the world - or at least human life on it - looks like it's nearing its end? How about starting with wonder at the possibility that dialogue and subjectivity, the bases of human language, are possible now? In "Time and Human Language Now", two lifelong friends share, in the form of a long-distance e-mail correspondence, a conversation about the relation between cosmos and consciousness, and about the possibility of being responsibly open toward the future without either despair or unreasoning hope. The urgency that underlies this dialogue is the conviction that there can only be reason for hope if the members of homo sapiens can learn - soon - how vital and astonishing is the phenomenon of shared human presence through language.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Academics routinely engage with colleagues in the research community as a critical part of their work. But, although many researchers are also dedicated teachers, teaching tends to be seen as a private matter between a teacher and his or her students. But why shouldn't faculty members feel a similar impulse to be aware of what their colleagues are doing in the area of teaching? What do we miss when the conversation, especially at major research universities, is focused almost exclusively on research?             In this revised and expanded collection of essays, Judith Shapiro, former president of Barnard College, issues an impassioned clarion call for a renewed focus on the role of community in teaching. When faculty members feel that they are not only a community of scholars, but also a community of teachers, teaching becomes more engaging for both students and teachers. Encouraging high-quality conversation about the pedagogical approaches that have proven most effective also puts the contributions of virtual, online communication into proper perspective and brings into clearer focus the advantages of a liberal arts education. With an argument that is controversial and sure to spark discussion and debate, Community of Scholars, Community of Teachers shows how higher education can become even more of a true community.…

Paperback. Condición: New. We often assume that science and myth stand in opposition-with science providing empirically supported truths that replace the false ideas found in traditional mythologies. But the rhetoric of contemporary popular science and related genres tells a different story about what contemporary readers really want from science. In The Science of Myths and Vice Versa, Gregory Schrempp offers four provocative vignettes that bring copious amounts of research on both traditional and modern mythologies to bear on the topic of science in contemporary popular culture. Schrempp shows how writers such as Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Pollan successfully fuse science and myth to offer compelling narratives about how we can improve our understanding of ourselves and our world. The most effective science writers, he finds, are those who make use of the themes and motifs of folklore to increase the appeal of their work. Schrempp's understanding of science and myth as operating not in opposition but in reciprocal relation offers an essential corrective to contemporary mischaracterizations.…

Paperback. Condición: New. As George W. Bush's Iraq mission unraveled, U.S. policy elites revived counterinsurgency doctrines - known in an earlier incarnation as pacification. The new edition of the "Counterinsurgency Field Manual" defines pacification as 'the process by which the government assert[s] its influence and control in an area beset by insurgents', which includes 'local security efforts, programs to distribute food and medical supplies, and lasting reforms (like land redistribution)'. Such language may sound innocuous, but for Kurt Jacobsen and fellow skeptics, 'pacification' and its synonym 'counterinsurgency' are stale euphemisms for violent suppression of popular resistance movements abroad - the tragic atrocities committed against non-combatants in Vietnam and elsewhere. In this pamphlet, Jacobsen examines pacification, the rehabilitation of repressive practices, and their attendant illusions - practices that, he argues, civilized nations have a duty to abandon.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Adapting the discontinuous and multitonal critical procedures of works like Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and Laura Riding's "Anarchism Is Not Enough", in this pamphlet Jerome McGann subjects current literary studies to a patacritical investigation. The investigation centers on the interpretation of a notorious modern riddle: 'Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read'. Working by indirection and from multiple points of view, the book argues that aesthetics is always a science of exceptions, and that any given critical practice is also always an exception from itself. The book works from two assumptions: first, that the riddle of the dog conceals an allegory about book culture and is addressed to the academic custodians of book culture; and second, that any explanation of the riddle is necessarily implicated in the problem posed by the riddle. It therefore remains to be seen - it is the reader's part to decide - whether the book is a friend to man or - perhaps like the riddle of the dog - 'too dark to read'.…

Paperback. Condición: New. President Bush was roundly criticized for likening America's antiterrorism measures to a "crusade" in 2001. Far from just a gaffe, however, such medievalism has become a dominant paradigm for comprehending the identity and motivations of America's perceived enemy in the war on terror. Yet as Bruce Holsinger argues here, this cloying post-9/11 rhetoric has served to obscure the more intricate ideological machinations of neomedievalism, the global idiom of the non-state actor: non-governmental organizations, transnational corporate militias, and terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda. "Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror" addresses the role of neomedievalism in contemporary politics. While international-relations theorists promote neomedievalism as a model for understanding emergent modes of global sovereignty, neoconservatives exploit its conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends. Holsinger concludes with a careful parsing of the Bush administration's torture memos, which enlist neomedievalism's model of feudal sovereignty on behalf of the abrogation of human rights.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Has corporate business overtaken the art world? It's no secret that art and business have always mixed, but their relationship today sparks more questions than ever. "Museum, Inc." describes the new art conglomerates from an insider's perspective, probing how their roots run deep into corporate culture. Paul Werner draws on his nine years at the Guggenheim Museum to reveal that contemporary art museums have not broken radically with the past, as often claimed. Rather, Werner observes, they are the logical outcome of the evolution of cultural institutions rooted in the Enlightenment, the colonial expansion of the liberal nation-state, and the rhetoric of democracy. In a witty and argumentative style, Werner critically analyzes today's art institutions and reframes the public's accepted view of them, exposing how their apparent success belies the troubling forces operating within them. He ultimately argues that the art museum we know and love may have already run its course. An engaging discourse structured as an informal gallery talk, "Museum, Inc." is a thought-provoking and passionate polemic that offers ideas for a new, more democratic museum.…

Paperback. Condición: New. In the twenty-first century, the idea of race in sports is rapidly changing. The National Basketball Association, for instance, was recently home to a new kind of racial conflict. After a recent playoff loss, Houston head coach, Jeff Van Gundy alleged that Yao Ming, his Chinese star center, was the victim of phantom calls, or refereeing decisions that may have been ethnically biased. Grant Farred here shows how this incident can be seen as a pivotal moment in the globalization of the NBA. With some forty percent of its players coming from foreign nations, the idea of race in the NBA has become increasingly multifaceted. Farred explains how allegations of phantom calls, such as Van Gundy's challenge the fiction that America is a post-racial society and compel us to think in new ways about the nexus of race and racism in America.…

Paperback. Condición: New. In recent years, Confucius Institutes have sprung up on more than four hundred and fifty campuses worldwide, including nearly one hundred across the United States. At first glance, this seems like a benefit for everyone concerned. The colleges and universities receive considerable contributions from the Confucius Institutes' head office in Beijing, including funds to cover the cost of set-up, the provision of Chinese-language instructors, and a cache of other resources. For their part, the Confucius Institutes are able to further their mission of spreading knowledge of Chinese language and culture. But Marshall Sahlins argues that this seemingly innocuous arrangement conceals the more dubious mission of promoting the political influence of the Chinese government, as guided by the propaganda apparatus of the party-state. Drawing on reports in the media and conversations with those involved, Sahlins shows that the Confucius Institutes are a threat to the principles of academic freedom and integrity at the foundation of our system of higher education. Incidents of academic malpractice are disturbingly common, Sahlins shows.They range from virtually unnoticeable acts of self-censorship to the discouragement of visits from the Dalai Lama and publicly notorious cases like a recent discrimination suit brought against McMaster University when a Confucius Institute teacher was unable to maintain her position after revealing her adherence to Falun Gong. As prominent universities are persuaded by the promise of additional funding to allow Confucius Institutes on campus, they also legitimate them and thereby encourage the participation of other schools less able to resist Beijing's inducements. But if these great institutions are to uphold the academic principles upon which they are founded, Sahlins convincingly argues, they must reverse this course, terminate their relations with the Confucius Institutes, and resume their obligation of living up to the idea of the university.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Brazilian anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cunha examines here the complex meaning-and anthropological implications-of the word "culture" for indigenous peoples. Caneiro da Cunha explores the contradictions inherent in the interface between Western and traditional understandings of knowledge and intellectual property rights. Distinguishing culture from "culture," the latter being a reflexive awareness of one's culture, Carneiro da Cunha then poses questions such as: What are the cognitive and pragmatic consequences when "culture" and culture coexist? She shows how the word "culture," as used in the anthropological sense, is employed by indigenous people to distinguish the different interpretations and avoid contradictions. "Culture" and Culture offers a concise and innovative anthropological study of a crucial issue faced by indigenous peoples the world over.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Surrealism was not merely an artistic movement to its adherents but an "instrument of knowledge," an attempt to transform the way we see the world by unleashing the unconscious as a radical, new means of constructing reality. Born out of the crisis of civilization brought about by World War I, it presented a sustained challenge to scientific rationalism as a privileged mode of knowing. In certain ways, surrealism's critique of white, Western civilization anticipated many later attempts at producing feminist and postcolonial epistemologies. With Making Trouble, sociologist and cultural historian Derek Sayer explores what it might mean to take surrealism's critique of civilization seriously. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, Sayer first establishes surrealism as an important intellectual antecedent to the study of the human sciences today. He then makes a compelling and well-written argument for rethinking surrealism as a contemporary methodological resource for all those who still look to the human sciences not only as a way to interpret the world, but also to change it.…

Paperback. Condición: New. "The most interesting human beings, so far as talk is concerned, are anthropologists, farmers, prostitutes, psychiatrists, and the occasional bartender." So wrote Joseph Mitchell, the legendary New Yorker journalist and chronicler of the full spectrum of humanity in New York City from the 1930s to the '60s, when his last columns were published. The critic Malcolm Cowley called Mitchell "the best reporter in the country," while Stanley Edgar Hyman would later write that he was "a reporter only in the sense that Defoe is a reporter, a humorist only in the sense that Faulkner is a humorist." But, before he found fame, Mitchell worked as a beat reporter with an unusually keen sense of style and uncommonly graceful prose at the now-defunct World-Telegram. There, he wrote a series of articles on the anthropologist Franz Boas, who influenced his trenchant observations of humanity.Man with Variations republishes Mitchell's writings on Boas, which weave together interviews with the great anthropologist and his students and colleagues to recount a formative period in American anthropology, as well as the journalist's own compelling set of reflections on the human condition.Man with Variations will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the discipline, and it will also be welcomed by the new generation of readers who are discovering Mitchell's work.…

Paperback. Condición: New. How can economics become genuinely quantitative? This is the question that French sociologist Gabriel Tarde tackled at the end of his career, and in this pamphlet, Bruno Latour and Vincent Antonin Lepinay offer a lively introduction to the work of that forgotten genius of nineteenth-century social thought. Tarde's solution was in total contradiction to the dominant views of his time: to quantify the connections between people and goods, you need to grasp 'passionate interests'. In Tarde's view, capitalism is not a system of cold calculations - rather it is a constant amplification in the intensity and reach of passions. In a stunning anticipation of contemporary economic anthropology, Tarde's work defines an alternative path beyond the two illusions responsible for so much modern misery: the adepts of the Invisible Hand and the devotees of the Visible Hand will learn how to escape the sterility of their fight and recognize the originality of a thinker for whom everything is intersubjective, hence quantifiable.At a time when the regulation of financial markets is the subject of heated debate, Latour and Lepinay provide a valuable historical perspective on the fundamental nature of capitalism.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Data is too big to be left to the data analysts. Data: Now Bigger and Better! brings together researchers whose work is deeply informed by the conceptual frameworks of anthropology-frameworks that are comparative as well as field-based. From kinship to gifts, everything old becomes rich with new insight when the anthropological archive washes over "big data." Bringing together anthropology's classic debates and contemporary interventions, the book counters the future-oriented speculation so characteristic of discussions regarding big data. Drawing on long-standing experience in industry contexts, the contributors also provide analytical provocations that can help reframe some of the most important shifts in technology and society in the first half of the twenty-first century.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Why do we understand media the way we do? In their simplest forms, media are means of communication and instruments of human creativity. But on another level, news outlets are powerful entities that govern how we think and act in the world, and they can even take on a sinister character, with conglomerates working in opposition to freedom of information. Dominic Boyer grapples with these complexities in "Understanding Media", where he questions what our different ways of engaging media actually tell us about ourselves, communication, and how we relate to information. "Understanding Media" explores, in a serious yet entertaining way, our common habits of thinking about the presence and significance of the channels of information in our lives. Offering analysis of the philosophical and social foundations of contemporary media theory as well as everyday strategies of knowing media, it addresses the advantages and limitations of different ways of understanding it. Finally, Boyer reflects on how we can know media better than we do.…

Paperback. Condición: New. What is ethics? Is it a system of transcendent moral imperatives, or can it be produced by ordinary people in everyday life? Do the daily rules of interaction constitute a code of ethics? In The Culture of Ethics, renowned anthropologists Franco La Cecla and Piero Zanini address these questions in a series of thought-provoking reflections that draw their inspiration from diverse sources, ranging from fieldwork in Papua New Guinea to cinematic depictions of the Ten Commandments. An engaging and accessible contribution to the emerging interest in "ordinary ethics," The Culture of Ethics explores what anthropology has to offer on the question of how we ought to live.…

Paperback. Condición: New. This is the long-awaited fifth edition of Marshall Sahlins' classic series of bon mots, ruminations, and musings on the ancients, anthropology, and much else in between. It's been twenty-five years since Sahlins first devised some after-dinner entertainment at a decennial meeting of the Association of Social Anthropologists in Great Britain, published soon thereafter by Prickly Paradigm's first incarnation, Prickly Pear. What the Foucault? contains all the old chestnuts, but has been thoroughly updated, and is laced through with all the wit and wisdom we've come to expect.…

Paperback. Condición: New. In this lucid and insightful essay, renowned linguist Roy Harris reflects on the early nineteenth-century doctrine of 'art for art's sake'. Attacked by Proudhon and Nietzsche, but defended by Theophile Gautier and E. M. Forster, it influenced movements as diverse as futurism and Dada. Over the past two centuries, three main positions have emerged. The 'institutional' view declares art to be a status conferred upon certain works by the approval of influential institutions. The 'idiocentric' view gives absolute priority to the judgment of the individual. The third is the 'conceptual' view of art, which insists that what counts is the idea that inspired a work, not the physical execution. But, as Harris shows, the tacit assumptions which once supported this debate and these positions have now collapsed. "Art" as a coherent category has imploded, leaving behind a historical residue of empty questions that contemporary society can no longer answer. "The Great Debate about Art" provides much-needed signposts for understanding this sorry state of affairs.…

Paperback. Condición: New. For decades, Israel and Palestine have been locked in ongoing conflict over land that each claims as its own. The conflict is often considered a calculated landgrab, but this characterization does little to take into account the myriad motivations that have shaped it in ways that make it seem intractable, from powerful nationalist and theological ideologies to the more practical concerns of the people who live there and just want to carry out their lives without the constant threat of war. In 2011, Neil Hertz lived in Ramallah in Palestine's occupied West Bank and taught in nearby Jerusalem. With "Pastoral in Palestine", he offers a personal take on the conflict. Though the situation has resulted in the erosion of both societies, Hertz could find no one in either Israel or Palestine who expressed much hope for a solution. Instead, they are resigned to find ways to live with the situation. Illustrated throughout with full-color photographs captured by Hertz, "Pastoral in Palestine" puts a human face to politics in the Middle East.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Pasta and pizza, in all their infinitely delicious and universally appealing varieties, are inextricably connected to Italian identity. These familiar foods not only represent Italy's culinary traditions, according to anthropologist Franco La Cecla, they have unified the Italian people and spread Italian culture worldwide. "Pasta and Pizza" tells the story of how cuisine born in the south of Italy during the Arab conquest became a foundation for the creation of a new nation. As La Cecla shows, this process intensified as millions of Italians immigrated to the Americas: it was abroad that pasta and pizza became synonymous with being Italian, and the foods' popularity grew as the Italian presence expanded in American culture. More than literature, art, or even language, food serves as a strong cultural rallying point for the Italian people and a way to disseminate Italian traditions worldwide. Available for the first time in English, La Cecla's lively and accessible study will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from social theorists to avid foodies.…

Paperback. Condición: New. Politicians, pundits, and Pentagon officials are singing the praises of a kinder, gentler American counterinsurgency. Some claim that counterinsurgency is so sophisticated and effective that it is the 'graduate level of war'. Private military contracting firms have jumped on the bandwagon, and many have begun employing anthropologists, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists to help meet the Department of Defense's new demand. The $60 million Human Terrain System (HTS), an intelligence gathering program that embeds social scientists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, dramatically illustrates the approach. But when the military, transnational corporations, and the human sciences become obsessed with controlling the 'human terrain' - the civilian populations of Iraq and Afghanistan - what are the consequences? In this timely pamphlet, Roberto J. Gonzalez offers a searing critique of HTS, showing how the history of anthropology can be used to illuminate the problems of turning 'culture' into a military tool.…

Paperback. Condición: New. The Iran depicted in the headlines is a rogue state ruled by ever-more-defiant Islamic fundamentalists. Yet inside the borders, an unheralded transformation of a wholly different political bent is occurring. A "liberal renaissance," as one Iranian thinker terms it, is emerging in Iran, and in this pamphlet, Danny Postel charts the contours of the intellectual upheaval. Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran examines the conflicted positions of the Left toward Iran since 1979, and, in particular, critically reconsiders Foucault's connection to the Iranian Revolution. Postel explores the various elements of the subtle liberal revolution and proposes a host of potential implications of this transformation for Western liberalism. He examines the appeal of Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin among Iranian intellectuals and ponders how their ideas appear back to us when refracted through a Persian prism. Postel closes with a thought-provoking conversation with eminent Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo. A provocative and incisive polemic highly relevant to our times, Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran will be of interest to anyone who wants to get beyond alarmist rhetoric and truly understand contemporary Iran.…

Paperback. Condición: New. As the People's Republic of China has grown in economic power, so too have concerns about what its sustained growth and expanding global influence might mean for the established global order. Explorations of this changing dynamic in daily reporting as well as most recent scholarship ignore the part played by forces emanating from the global capitalist system in the PRC's failures as well as its successes. China scholar Arif Dirlik reflects in Complicities on a wide range of concerns, from the Tiananmen Square tragedy to the spread of Confucius Institutes across more than four hundred campuses worldwide, including nearly one hundred in the United States. Eschewing popular stereotypes and simple explanations, Dirlik's discussion stresses foreign complicity in encouraging the PRC's imperial ambitions and disdain for human rights. Eager for economic gain, the United States, Europe, and other Western countries have been complicit in supporting the PRC's authoritarian capitalism. Such support has been a key factor in nourishing the PRC's hegemonic aspirations.Infatuation with the PRC's incorporation in global capitalism has been important to Communist Party leaders' ability to suppress all memory and mention of Tiananmen, and their continuing abuse of human rights. More recently, the PRC's focus has migrated to "soft power" as a means of expanding global influence, with organizations like the Confucius Institutes exploiting foreign educational institutions to promote the political aims of the state.…

Paperback. Condición: New. As the planet's human numbers grow and environmental concerns proliferate, natural scientists, economists, and policy-makers are increasingly turning to new and old questions about families and kinship as matters of concern. From government programs designed to fight declining birth rates in Europe and East Asia, to controversial policies seeking to curb population growth in countries where birth rates remain high, to increasing income inequality transnationally, issues of reproduction introduce new and complicated moral and political quandaries.Making Kin Not Population ends the silence on these issues with essays from leading anti-racist, ecologically-concerned, feminist scholars. Though not always in accord, these contributors provide bold analyses of complex issues of intimacy and kinship, from reproductive justice to environmental justice, and from human and nonhuman genocides to new practices for making families and kin. This timely work offers vital proposals for forging innovative personal and public connections in the contemporary world.…