Author: Zygmunt Bauman File Type: epub In its original formulation, culture was intended to be an agent for change, a mission undertaken with the aim of educating the people by bringing the best of human thought and creativity to them. But in our contemporary liquid-modern world, culture has lost its missionary role and has become a means of seduction it seeks no longer to enlighten the people but to seduce them. The function of culture today is not to satisfy existing needs but to create new ones, while simultaneously ensuring that existing needs remain permanently unfulfilled. Culture today likens itself to a giant department store where the shelves are overflowing with desirable goods that are changed on a daily basis - just long enough to stimulate desires whose gratification is perpetually postponed. In this new book Zygmunt Bauman - one of the most brilliant and influential social thinkers of our time - retraces the peregrinations of the concept of culture and examines its fate in a world marked by the powerful new forces of globalization, migration and the intermingling of populations. He argues that Europe has a particularly important role to play in revitalizing our understanding of culture precisely because Europe, with its great diversity of peoples, languages and histories, is the space where the Other is always ones neighbour and where each is constantly called upon to learn from everyone else. **

Author: Chris Dalglish File Type: pdf Understanding the emergence of modern society is understanding how todays social relationships came to be historically structured as they are. This work, focused on the Southern Scottish Highlands, is particularly concerned with the growth to predominance of the social relations of capitalism, where the central place of the individual, defined in isolation from wider society, relates to individualized notions of private property and land ownership, land rights and tenancy. This shift in importance of relationships was achieved through improvement, a process involving fundamental change in the ways people engaged with each other. Improvement emphasized the individualized relationships of capitalism over those of community or kin, and this was in large measure achieved through the restructuring of the material, physical environment. This essential reading will be of importance to archaeologists specializing in capitalism, and historical, as well as to archaeology and Scottish archaeologists and historians.ReviewFrom the reviews Dalglish has given us such a rich and nuanced study. Rural Society in the Age of Reason is a welcome addition to the growing number of works whose goal is to build a global and historical understanding of the modern world. As such, this book has something for archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians alike. (Robert Paynter, Journal of Anthropological Research, 60 2004) This [is] the first British volume in the Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology. Overall this is an important and well argued study of changes well known and acknowledged at one level. Dalglish elegantly shows that much of interest and value can be discerned by examining the motivations and strategies of individuals, and that a society-wide or class-based reaction should not be assumed. This should encourage further regional studies to widen and deepen our understanding of the application of and reaction to Improvement not only in the Scottish Highlands but also elsewhere. (Harold Mytum, Post-Medieval Archaeology)

Author: Rudolf Steiner File Type: pdf In the best tradition of ancient wisdom literature, COSMIC MEMORY reconstructs from the akashic record events between the origin of the earth and the beginning of recorded history, including a core investigation of the origins, achievements, and the fate of the Atlanteans and Lemurians. These remarkable lost root races developed the first concepts of good and evil, manipulated the forces of nature, laid the groundwork of all human legal and ethical systems, and defined and nurtured the distinctive yet complementary powers of men and women that brought humankind, many centuries ago, to its highest artistic, intellectual, and spiritual attainments. Through this discussion of our true origins, COSMIC MEMORY gives us a genuine foundation for our lives allows us to realize our real value, dignity, and essence enlightens us about our connection with the world around us and shows us our highest goals, our true destiny.(source Bol.com)

Author: Isabelle Stengers File Type: pdf Like fast food, fast science is quickly prepared, not particularly good, and it clogs up the system. Efforts to tackle our most pressing issues have been stymied by conflict within the scientific community and mixed messages symptomatic of a rushed approach. What is more, scientific research is being shaped by the bubbles and crashes associated with economic speculation and the market. A focus on conformism, competitiveness, opportunism and flexibility has made it extremely difficult to present cases of failure to the public, for fear that it will lose confidence in science altogether. In this bold new book, distinguished philosopher Isabelle Stengers shows that research is deeply intertwined with broader social interests, which means that science cannot race ahead in isolation but must learn instead to slow down. Stengers offers a path to an alternative science, arguing that researchers should stop seeing themselves as the thinking, rational brain of humanity and refuse to allow their expertise to be used to shut down the concerns of the public, or to spread the belief that scientific progress is inevitable and will resolve all of societys problems. Rather, science must engage openly and honestly with an intelligent public and be clear about the kind of knowledge it is capable of producing. This timely and accessible book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers in a wide range of fields, as well anyone concerned with the role of science and its future.**ReviewToday, more than ever before, we need this book. Stengers, a philosopher known internationally for her willingness to tackle the big questions of our time, insists thatAnother Science is Possible. Toughly and tightly argued her book spells out how slow science could get us there. One key point she raises, missed by so many, is the disillusion and distress, Marx might well have said alienation, of the young scientists who find that the science they believed they were going to be part of, is not the science they are working within. Only crack heads can deny climate change and its threat to life itself, but flinching, and looking away from the necessity of transforming science is politically and ethically inadequate. Stengers offers the new generation that is rising upwith its new political narrative, intellectual weaponry in the formidable project of turning science away from its destructive collaboration with neoliberal capital to help build -yes -a better world. And dont we need one! Hilary Rose, Emerita Professor of Social Policy, University of Bradford Stengerss slow science manifesto is timely, trenchant and thoughtful. Nature About the Author Isabelle Stengers is Professor of Philosophy of Science at theUniversite Libre de Bruxelles.