- Table View
- List View
The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power
by Jared A. BallThis Palgrave Pivot offers a history of and proof against claims of "buying power" and the impact this myth has had on understanding media, race, class and economics in the United States. For generations Black people have been told they have what is now said to be more than one trillion dollars of "buying power," and this book argues that commentators have misused this claim largely to blame Black communities for their own poverty based on squandered economic opportunity. This book exposes the claim as both a marketing strategy and myth, while also showing how that myth functions simultaneously as a case study for propaganda and commercial media coverage of economics. In sum, while “buying power” is indeed an economic and marketing phrase applied to any number of racial, ethnic, religious, gender, age or group of consumers, it has a specific application to Black America.
The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power: Media, Race, Economics
by Jared A. BallThe second edition of this Palgrave Pivot offers a history of and proof against claims of "buying power" and the impact this myth has had on understanding media, race, class and economics in the United States. For generations Black people have been told they have what is now said to be more than one trillion dollars of "buying power," and this book argues that commentators have misused this claim largely to blame Black communities for their own poverty based on squandered economic opportunity. This book exposes the claim as both a marketing strategy and myth, while also showing how that myth functions simultaneously as a case study for propaganda and commercial media coverage of economics. In sum, while “buying power” is indeed an economic and marketing phrase applied to any number of racial, ethnic, religious, gender, age or group of consumers, it has a specific application to Black America. A new foreword by Dr. Darrick Hamilton, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at the New School (in New York, USA), and a new chapter on cryptocurrencies are included in this new edition.
The Myth of American Exceptionalism
by Godfrey HodgsonThe idea that the United States is destined to spread its unique gifts of democracy and capitalism to other countries is dangerous for Americans and for the rest of the world, warns Godfrey Hodgson in this provocative book.
The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf
by Muhammad Al-QasimiThe British became the dominant power in the Arab Gulf in the late eighteenth century. The conventional view has justified British imperial expansion in the Gulf region because of the need to supress Arab piracy. This book, first published in 1988, challenges the myth of piracy and argues that its threat was created by the East India Company for commercial reasons. The Company was determined to increase its share of Gulf trade with India at the expense of the native Arab traders, especially the Qawasim of the lower Gulf. However, the Company did not possess the necessary warships and needed to persuade the British Government to commit the Royal Navy to achieve this dominance. Accordingly the East India Company orchestrated a campaign to misrepresent the Qawasim as pirates who threatened all maritime activity in the northern Indian Ocean and adjacent waters. Any misfortune that happened to any ship in the area was attributed to the ‘Joasmee pirates’. This campaign was to lead eventually to the storming of Ras al-Khaimah and the destruction of the Qawasim. Based on extensive use of the Bombay Archives, previously unused by researchers, this book provides a thorough reinterpretation of a vital period in Gulf history. It also illuminates the style and method of the East India Company at a critical period in the expansion of the British Empire.
The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do
by Erik J. Larson“Artificial intelligence has always inspired outlandish visions—that AI is going to destroy us, save us, or at the very least radically transform us. Erik Larson exposes the vast gap between the actual science underlying AI and the dramatic claims being made for it. This is a timely, important, and even essential book.” —John Horgan, author of The End of Science Many futurists insist that AI will soon achieve human levels of intelligence. From there, it will quickly eclipse the most gifted human mind. The Myth of Artificial Intelligence argues that such claims are just that: myths. We are not on the path to developing truly intelligent machines. We don’t even know where that path might be. Erik Larson charts a journey through the landscape of AI, from Alan Turing’s early work to today’s dominant models of machine learning. Since the beginning, AI researchers and enthusiasts have equated the reasoning approaches of AI with those of human intelligence. But this is a profound mistake. Even cutting-edge AI looks nothing like human intelligence. Modern AI is based on inductive reasoning: computers make statistical correlations to determine which answer is likely to be right, allowing software to, say, detect a particular face in an image. But human reasoning is entirely different. Humans do not correlate data sets; we make conjectures sensitive to context—the best guess, given our observations and what we already know about the world. We haven’t a clue how to program this kind of reasoning, known as abduction. Yet it is the heart of common sense. Larson argues that all this AI hype is bad science and bad for science. A culture of invention thrives on exploring unknowns, not overselling existing methods. Inductive AI will continue to improve at narrow tasks, but if we are to make real progress, we must abandon futuristic talk and learn to better appreciate the only true intelligence we know—our own.
The Myth of Colorblindness: Race and Ethnicity in American Cinema
by Sarah E. Turner Sarah NilsenThis book explores representations of race and ethnicity in contemporary cinema and the ways in which these depictions all too often promulgate an important racial ideology: the myth of colorblindness. Colorblindness is a discursive framework employed by mainstream, neoliberal media to celebrate a multicultural society while simultaneously disregarding its systemic and institutionalized racism. This collection is unique in its examination of such films as Ex Machina, The Lone Ranger, The Blind Side, Zootopia, The Fast and the Furious franchise, and Dope, which celebrate the myth of colorblindness, yet perpetuate and entrench the racism and racial inequities that persist in contemporary society. While the #OscarsSoWhite movement has been essential to bringing about structural changes to media industries and offers the opportunity for a wide diversity of voices to alter and transform the dominant, colorblind narratives continue to proliferate. As this book demonstrates, Hollywood still has a long way to go.
The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege
by Ken WytsmaIs privilege real or imagined?The Myth of Equality
The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege
by Ken Wytsma2017 Foreword INDIES Book Award Honorable MentionPublishers Weekly'sIs privilege real or imagined?
The Myth of Human Supremacy
by Derrick JensenIn this impassioned polemic, radical environmental philosopher Derrick Jensen debunks the belief in a hierarchy of nature and the superiority of humans. Vast and underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life are explored in detail; the paralysis of the scientific establishment on moral and ethical issues is confronted; and a radical new framework for assessing the intelligence and sentience of nonhuman life is put forth. A philosopher-poet of the environmental movement, Jensen sounds an urgent call for its liberation from human domination.
The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction
by Tony CastanhaThis book debunks one of the greatest myths ever told in Caribbean history: that the indigenous peoples who encountered a very lost Christopher Columbus are 'extinct. ' Through the uncovering of recent ethnographical data, the author reveals extensive narratives of Jíbaro Indian resistance and cultural continuity on the island of Borikén.
The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Borikén (Puerto Rico)
by T. CastanhaThis book debunks one of the greatest myths ever told in Caribbean history: that the indigenous peoples who encountered a very lost Christopher Columbus are 'extinct.' Through the uncovering of recent ethnographical data, the author reveals extensive narratives of Jíbaro Indian resistance and cultural continuity on the island of Borikén.
The Myth of International Protection: War and Survival in Congo (California Series in Public Anthropology #43)
by Claudia SeymourIn this viscerally intense, ethnographically based work, Claudia Seymour relates the heart-wrenching stories of young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo—young people who live on the front lines of conflict, in neighborhoods and villages destroyed by war, and on the streets in conditions of poverty and destitution. Seymour, a former child protection adviser and human rights investigator for the United Nations, chronicles her personal journey, which begins with the will to do good yet ends with the realization of how international aid can contribute to greater harm than good. The idea of protection and universalized human rights is turned on its head as Seymour uncovers the complicities and hypocrisies of the aid world. In the promotion of “inalienable human rights,” aid organizations ignore the complex historical and socioeconomic dynamics that lead to the violations of such rights. Offering a new perspective, The Myth of International Protection reframes how the world sees the DRC and urges global audiences to consider their own roles in fueling the DRC’s seemingly endless violence.In this viscerally intense, ethnographically-based work, Claudia Seymour, a former child protection advisor and human rights investigator for the United Nations, chronicles the heart-wrenching stories of young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo—young people who live on the front lines of conflict, in neighborhoods and villages destroyed by war, and on the streets in conditions of poverty and destitution. Seymour shares her personal journey, one that begins with the will to do good yet ends with the realization of how international aid can contribute to greater harm than good. The idea of protection and universalized human rights is turned on its head as Seymour uncovers the complicities and hypocrisies of the aid world—that in its promotion of “inalienable human rights”, the complex historical and socio-economic dynamics that lead to the violations of such rights are ignored. The Myth of International Protection offers a new perspective to reframe how the world sees the DRC, and urges global audiences to consider their own roles in fueling the DRC’s seemingly endless violence.
The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning
by Samhita MukhopadhyayWe can bury the girlboss, but what comes next? The former executive editor of Teen Vogue tells the story of her personal workplace reckoning and argues for collective responsibility to reimagine work as we know it.&“One of the smartest voices we have on gender, power, capitalist exploitation, and the entrenched inequities of the workplace.&”—Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad&“As I sat in the front row that day, I was 80 percent faking it with a 100-percent-real Gucci bag.&” Samhita Mukhopadhyay had finally made it: she had her dream job, dream clothes—dream life. But time and time again, she found herself sacrificing time with family and friends, paying too much for lattes, and limping home after working twelve hours a day. Success didn&’t come without costs, right? Or so she kept telling herself. And Mukhopadhyay wasn&’t alone: Far too many of us are taught that we need to work ourselves to the bone to live a good life. That we just need to climb up the corporate ladder, to &“lean in&” and &“hustle,&” to enact change. But as Mukhopadhyay shows, these definitions of success are myths—and they are seductive ones.Mukhopadhyay traces the origins of these myths, taking us from the sixties to the present. She forms a critical overview of workplace feminism, looking at stories from her own professional career, analysis from activists and experts, and of course, experiences of workers at different levels. As more individuals continue to question whether their professional ambitions can lead to happiness and fulfillment in the first place, Mukhopadhyay asks, What would it mean to have a liberated workplace? Mukhopadhyay emerges with a vision for a workplace culture that pays fairly, recognizes our values, and gives people access to the resources they need.A call to action to redefine and reimagine work as we know it, The Myth of Making It is a field guide and manifesto for all of us who are tired, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of hustle culture.
The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880-1922
by Joseph ValenteThis study aims to supply the first contextually precise account of the male gender anxieties and ambivalences haunting the culture of Irish nationalism in the period between the Act of Union and the founding of the Irish Free State. To this end, Joseph Valente focuses upon the Victorian ethos of manliness or manhood, the specific moral and political logic of which proved crucial to both the translation of British rule into British hegemony and the expression of Irish rebellion as Irish psychomachia. The influential operation of this ideological construct is traced through a wide variety of contexts, including the career of Ireland's dominant Parliamentary leader, Charles Stewart Parnell; the institutions of Irish Revivalism--cultural, educational, journalistic, and literary; the writings of both canonical authors (Yeats, Synge, Gregory, and Joyce) and subcanonical authors (James Stephens, Patrick Pearse, Lennox Robinson); and major political movements of the time, including suffragism, Sinn Fein, Na Fianna E Éireann, and the Volunteers. The construct of manliness remains very much alive today, underpinning the neo-imperialist marriage of ruthless aggression and the sanctities of duty, honor, and sacrifice. Mapping its earlier colonial and postcolonial formations can help us to understand its continuing geopolitical appeal and danger.
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future
by Cynthia EllerAccording to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, men and women lived together peacefully before recorded history. Society was centered around women, with their mysterious life-giving powers, and they were honored as incarnations and priestesses of the Great Goddess. Then a transformation occurred, and men thereafter dominated society. Given the universality of patriarchy in recorded history, this vision is understandably appealing for many women. But does it have any basis in fact? And as a myth, does it work for the good of women? Cynthia Eller traces the emergence of the feminist matriarchal myth, explicates its functions, and examines the evidence for and against a matriarchal prehistory. Finally, she explains why this vision of peaceful, woman-centered prehistory is something feminists should be wary of.
The Myth of Measurement: Inspection, audit, targets and the public sector (SAGE Swifts)
by Nick FrostIn the public sector inspection regimes and performance targets provide a powerful and dominant narrative, often placing pressure on professionals and organisations to continuously quantify the quality of services and to achieve targets. This book explores the background, development, techniques and impact of such regimes across areas of the public sector including schools, universities, police forces, children’s services and health services. Putting inspection and audit regimes under scrutiny, the author questions their role and function across these organisations and builds a persuasive critical argument for the re-thinking of public accountability mechanisms and techniques.
The Myth of Measurement: Inspection, audit, targets and the public sector (SAGE Swifts)
by Nick FrostIn the public sector inspection regimes and performance targets provide a powerful and dominant narrative, often placing pressure on professionals and organisations to continuously quantify the quality of services and to achieve targets. This book explores the background, development, techniques and impact of such regimes across areas of the public sector including schools, universities, police forces, children’s services and health services. Putting inspection and audit regimes under scrutiny, the author questions their role and function across these organisations and builds a persuasive critical argument for the re-thinking of public accountability mechanisms and techniques.
The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight: How Place Still Matters for the Rich (Studies in Social Inequality)
by Cristobal YoungIn this age of globalization, many countries and U.S. states are worried about the tax flight of the rich. As income inequality grows and U.S. states consider raising taxes on their wealthiest residents, there is a palpable concern that these high rollers will board their private jets and fly away, taking their wealth with them. Many assume that the importance of location to a person's success is at an all-time low. Cristobal Young, however, makes the surprising argument that location is very important to the world's richest people. Frequently, he says, place has a great deal to do with how they make their millions. In The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight, Young examines a trove of data on millionaires and billionaires—confidential tax returns, Forbes lists, and census records—and distills down surprising insights. While economic elites have the resources and capacity to flee high-tax places, their actual migration is surprisingly limited. For the rich, ongoing economic potential is tied to the place where they become successful—often where they are powerful insiders—and that success ultimately diminishes both the incentive and desire to migrate. This important book debunks a powerful idea that has driven fiscal policy for years, and in doing so it clears the way for a new era. Millionaire taxes, Young argues, could give states the funds to pay for infrastructure, education, and other social programs to attract a group of people who are much more mobile—the younger generation.
The Myth of Moral Panics: Sex, Snuff, and Satan (Routledge Advances in Criminology #14)
by Andy Williams Bill ThompsonThis study provides a comprehensive critique - forensic, historical, and theoretical - of the moral panic paradigm, using empirically grounded ethnographic research to argue that the panic paradigm suffers from fundamental flaws that make it a myth rather than a viable academic perspective.
The Myth of Overpunishment: A Defense of the American Justice System and a Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting the Public
by Barry Latzer Tom CottonJustice is on trial in the United States.From police to prisons, the justice system is accused of overpunishing. It is said that too many Americans are abused by the police, arrested, jailed, and imprisoned. But the denunciations are overblown. The data indicates, contrary to the critics, that we don&’t imprison too many, nor do we overpunish. This becomes evident when we examine the crimes of prisoners and the actual time served. The history of punishment in the United States, discussed in vivid detail, reveals that the treatment of offenders has become progressively more lenient. Corporal punishment is no more. The death penalty has become a rarity. Many convicted defendants are given no-incarceration sentences. Restorative justice may be a good thing for low-level offenses, or as an add-on for remorseful prisoners, but when it comes to major crimes it is no substitute for punitive justice. The Myth of Overpunishment presents a workable and politically feasible plan to electronically monitor arrested suspects prior to adjudication (bail reform), defendants placed on probation, and parolees.
The Myth of Persephone in Girls' Fantasy Literature (Children's Literature and Culture)
by Holly BlackfordIn this book, Blackford historicizes the appeal of the Persephone myth in the nineteenth century and traces figurations of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades throughout girls’ literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She illuminates developmental patterns and anxieties in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. The story of the young goddess’s separation from her mother and abduction into the underworld is, at root, an expression of ambivalence about female development, expressed in the various Neverlands through which female protagonists cycle and negotiate a partial return to earth. The myth conveys the role of female development in the perpetuation and renewal of humankind, coordinating natural and cultural orders through a hieros gamos (fertility coupling) rite. Meanwhile, popular novels such as Twilight and Coraline are paradoxically fresh because they recycle goddesses from myths as old as the seasons. With this book, Blackford offers a consideration of how literature for the young squares with broader canons, how classics flexibly and uniquely speak through novels that enjoy broad appeal, and how female traditions are embedded in novels by both men and women.
The Myth of Post-Racialism in Television News (Routledge Transformations in Race and Media)
by Libby LewisThis book explores the written and unwritten requirements Black journalists face in their efforts to get and keep jobs in television news. Informed by interviews with journalists themselves, Lewis examines how raced Black journalists and their journalism organizations process their circumstances and choose to respond to the corporate and institutional constraints they face. She uncovers the social construction and attempted control of "Blackness" in news production and its subversion by Black journalists negotiating issues of objectivity, authority, voice, and appearance along sites of multiple differences of race, gender, and sexuality.
The Myth of Primitivism
by Susan HillerThis book explores the fusion of myth, history and geography which leads to ideas of primitivism, and looks at their construction, interpretation and consumption in Western culture. Contextualized by Susan Hiller's introductions to each section, discussions range from the origins of cultural colonialism to eurocentric ideas of primitive societies, including the use of primitive culture in constructing national identities, and the appropriation of primitivist imagery in modernist art. The result is a controversial critique of art theory, practice and politics, and a major enquiry into the history of primitivism and its implications for contemporary culture.
The Myth of Quetzalcoatl: Religion, Rulership, and History in the Nahua World
by Alfredo López AustinThe Myth of Quetzalcoatl is a translation of Alfredo López Austin’s 1973 book Hombre-Dios: Religión y politica en el mundo náhuatl. Despite its pervasive and lasting influence on the study of Mesoamerican history, religion in general, and the Quetzalcoatl myth in particular, this work has not been available in English until now. The importance of Hombre-Dios and its status as a classic arise from its interdisciplinary approach, creative use of a wide range of source material, and unsurpassed treatment of its subject—the nature and content of religious beliefs and rituals among the native populations of Mesoamerica and the manner in which they fused with and helped sanctify political authority and rulership in both the pre- and post-conquest periods. Working from a wide variety of previously neglected documentary sources, incorporating myth, archaeology, and the ethnography of contemporary Native Americans including non-Nahua peoples, López Austin traces the figure of Quetzalcoatl as a “Man-God” from pre-conquest times, while Russ Davidson’s translator’s note, Davíd Carrasco's foreword, and López Austin’s introduction place the work within the context of modern scholarship. López Austin’s original work on Quetzalcoatl is a pivotal work in the field of anthropology, and this long-overdue English translation will be of significance to historians, anthropologists, linguists, and serious readers interested in Mesoamerica.
The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea
by Robert Wald SussmanAlthough eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Robert Sussman explains why--when it comes to race--too many people still mistake bigotry for science.