The book explores how the good found in aesthetics is linked to the good found in the ethical codes that govern people's lives. These "goods" interact with the sense of the community expressed in society's envy of those exemplary few who possess the powers of the aesthetic, even as they too must subscribe to the same strictures by which ordinary people live. The book also demonstrates how the concept of a middle path, a straight and narrow way, or...(Read More)
"The Mysteries of Attention casts a complex argument in very readable terms. Its effort to situate literature in the midst of basic human concerns provides a very attractive alternative to several disabling contemporary habits of critical thought."-- Michael Anania, author of In Plain Sight: Obsessions, Morals and Domestic Laughter
"This book is Hans at his best. His work is evolving into a coherent oeuvre, even an ars poetic...(Read More)
One Blood
(July 1993)
The Jamaican Body Elisa Janine Sobo - Author
One Blood offers a wealth of ethnographic material, skillfully using traditional Jamaican images and expressions to present a coherent and systematic depiction of the Jamaican body, of how it works and of how health is maintained. Sobo explains some of the more complex issues of medical anthropology in a clear and accessible fashion and shows how gender and kinship tensions are expressed through culturally constructed syndromes. The book ex...(Read More)
"A worthy contribution to Holocaust literature: superb, dispassionate analysis of the roots of evil, perpetrated most often in lockstep with the culture that encourages and reinforces it." — Kirkus Discoveries
"The most interesting part of this book for me as a student of the Holocaust is the use of sociological categories to interpret the actions of the perpetrators and to a lesser extent the bystanders a...(Read More)
"This is a top-notch, scholarly work. I believe that Slife took a very difficult, complex topic and brought considerable understanding to it for the reader. Books of this type raise the level of sophistication in psychology." -- Joseph F. Rychlak, Loyola University
Psychology has been captured by an assumption that is almost totally unrecognized. This assumption--the linearity of time--unduly restricts theory and therapy, yet this restrict...(Read More)
Political Communication
(January 1993)
Engineering Visions of Order in the Socialist World Sarah Sanderson King - Editor Donald P. Cushman - Editor
"This book has a unique communication drama analysis which provides insight into complex political/economic/social changes in an important area of the world. The events happening now in communist countries would rank among the most significant changes of this century, and will have implications far into the next century as well. The book will prove of interest to scholars and students in many disciplines, including such diverse disciplines as com...(Read More)
When and how is the self acquired and what characterizes its development and change over the life span? What are the implications of using different methodologies to study the self with different age groups? This book addresses these and related questions.
"The authors have provided clearly written and well balanced accounts of the problems and possibilities inherent in 'self' that have been explored through the life span. The book provides i...(Read More)
Mixed Emotions
(July 1991)
Certain Steps Toward Understanding Ambivalence Andrew J. Weigert - Author
"The author has written a unique volume taking the concept of ambivalence to its central place in the understanding of modernity. By showing that religion provides both the site and the resolution of ambivalence, the author has addressed a major issue of our time in a new and exciting way.
"The concern with religion is rising in American social and academic thought. The author's innovative synthesis of the social psychology of ambivalence ...(Read More)
Understanding Human Action
(June 1981)
Social Explanation and the Vision of Social Science Michael A. Simon - Author
Is human behavior determined in accordance with causal laws available to scientists? Is science capable of making sense of human actions and social life? This book is a penetrating inquiry into the question of what social science is all about. In it, Michael A. Simon challenges the prevailing view with his thesis that the social sciences are sciences in name only, and are based upon the freedom and uniqueness of the human subjects of scientif...(Read More)
